Local Variety

While living in Austin, we decided to upgrade our television to better enjoy cinema. When our friends Marc and Linda came to visit, we decided to get the digital antenna so to better watch Giants/Texans game (Marc and I are Giants fans) on the local CBS affiliate.

To get any channels, we had to activate the "Auto Program" function from the menu. A prompt then comes onscreen with the picture of a satellite dish informing us that it could take up to fifty minutes to find all the channels, but in Austin it only took about two. We supposedly had 22 channels. By our count, there were at most a dozen English channels and a half dozen Spanish.

"Auto Program" also meant that by the time we got the teevee unpacked, set up, and plugged into the newly unearthed antenna, we had only the same Austin channels showing up. They were trying to detect data over those frequencies.

So we activated the apparently necessary function again. This time it took eleven minutes. This time we supposedly have 94 channels. Ninety-four.

Television is still a novelty to me. Corrie and I haven't had a proper teevee presence in our home since we moved in together, in aught-4. For Decemberween one year living in Brooklyn I was gifted a four-inch Radio Shack style portable television. The channel knob was exactly like a radio's dial, tuning through frequencies. An AM/FM-like switch was used to go between the the main broadcast channels, the VHF (very high frequencies), and the UHF (ultra high frequencies). Remember when UHF was on the second dial, the one that satisfyingly dudududududududududed the whole way 'round?

I watched Yankee games when they appeared on Channel 9 (MY 9 in the City). I had the sound turned off since the best the picture could made the sound unbearable. I even watched Peyton's Super Bowl triumph on the little guy. I thought what a crazy tool that little telly would be in places like Romania, or India. It was essentially a radio that showed pictures. Turn it on and see what's out there.

So now I have a movie screen that told me that just plugging it in gives me 94 channels. Still a novelty to me.

Exploring those broadcast channels produced some obvious discoveries. "94 channels" doesn't allot for copies. Like channels 18.1 through 18.9 are all the same, yet counted as nine. Another thing was that they weren't going to all be crazy unique English-speaking channels.

That's where I'm going with this. Guesses anyone? Obvious first pick: Spanish. There is, to quote the exasperated El Guapo, a plethora of choices for the Spanish speaking viewer. The largest number of non-English speaking channels in LA is Spanish, but it's not overwhelming. The next largest segment? My guess was Korean, after a handful of channels early on, but in reality it's Vietnamese. There is far more Vietnamese television here that I would have ever imagined. There is plenty of Korean as well. There is also a noticeable smattering of Chinese channels.

The last language presence that's here in LA is something I would never have guessed: Armenian. There are three or four Armenian channels, showing a wide range of Armenian programming. You've got sit-coms, hour long dramas, hour long action serials, news, all spread over multiple channels. How wealthy or how populous must the Armenian population be to be able to sustain multiple television channels?

Listening to Vietnamese is my favorite so far. The tonal changes are soothing and exotic.