Life in Cartagena

I was just watching Modern Family on the telly. "We'll be back in 6 minutes," said the message as we went into the adverts. I went to get a brandy and a snack. The programme came back on, I turned the volume up - 20 seconds more of Phil and Gloria and Mitchell and then WHAM "We´ll be back in 60 seconds." Groans from the sofa. Programme back on. Another 20 seconds and another WHAM "We'll be back in 2 minutes." Luckily there was nothing at hand to throw. There are no adverts on the public channels anymore so a 90 minute film takes 90 minutes to show. It's much better than the olden days when there were (I think) 18 minutes of advertising every hour. One of the favourite tricks was to put the last crop of adverts on just before the end of the film. The denouement is seconds away - adverts - final 45 second scene of the film and it's all over. Infuriating especially at 2am. So public telly has got much better. They still have long trailer...

Spain has switched off all its analogue television broadcasting. We now have TDT, Televisión Digital Terrestre. I don't know what it's called in the UK but its, terrestrial broadcasting, the stuff that comes in through a standardish looking TV aerial and which used to require one of the set top decoders before they started building them in to all those nice flat screen sets. It hasn't affected us at all because all of the major broadcasters have been transmitting digital signals for ages and we've watched digital telly in Culebrón for the last three or four years, for most of the time we were in Ciudad Rodrigo and here in Cartagena. The available channels vary a little from area to area but we currently have about thirty stations (including the dross such as shopping channels) and maybe ten radio channels. Nonetheless, some of the smaller broadcasters, the TV stations that broadcast within one town for instance, were only available through analogue signals. When I was...