Woo Hoo!! Ou Cocorico!! Or Wahey!!

[chessfou]

I dislike junk TV (soaps and game shows) but I really like TV5 news* - it covers world events (IMHO) in the way that people used to think that the BBC did years ago.

Anyway, just before TV5 news at 13.00h is "Chiffres et Lettres" (the French version of the Carol Vorderman programme, whatever it's called) and I occasionally catch the last item. I caught it today and managed a 9-letter word - the maximum possible - while the contestants were struggling with 7 or so.

I shall open an extra fine bottle** this evening to celebrate!

* TV5Monde Le Journal

** From the Hexagon needless to say. [;)]

TV5 is particularly good for news from Canada and the whole of the Southern Hemisphere. I still haven't seen anyone else pick up on their item (Monday?) about the Govt of Brasil (pop. ca. 180,000,000)  distributing 1,500,000,000 "chemises de Vénus" during Carnival. [6][<:o)]

[Rob G]

Hi chessfou,

I used to watch TV5 in the UK. We moved to France in November and stopped paying our Sky subscription, and as TV5 is not included in the free-to-air channels, we don't get it any more.

I have to say that I was impressed with the overall range and quality of programming on TV5; I used to get it years ago when we had cable for a while, and it was pretty awful back then. They've obviously got their act together and got a lot more resources now to be able to improve it as much as they have.

I suspect I watched it for different reasons from you - it was mainly to keep up with "actualités" in France, rather than for world news or to practise my French. This being the case, I found the preponderance of news from Canada/Belgium etc. a little annoying, not to mention the game shows of which you speak. (Btw, I think the English version of "Des chiffres et des lettres" is "Countdown".)

One thing I used to try to watch as often as possible was the evening news from France 2. It always amused me how at the end of the programme, the newsreader would say something like "thanks to all our overseas viewers" - very clever how they got this on the TV5 broadcast but not on the normal terrestrial F2 broadcast (at least I assume it wasn't - haven't actually watched the F2 evening news since arriving here!)

Rob