Television

Although I'm paying $7/month for cable (imagine that!), I've watched almost no tv since buying a DVD player way back in October. The huge old tv in my apt. can accommodate cable or a DVD player, but not both at the same time, unless I get intensive assistance from people who don't speak English and don't get paid enough to figure out the media access difficulties of a rich American.

So I've been reading a lot and watching DVDs. Every now and then I watch non-cable tv, all in Russian or Ukrainian, usually in Russian with Ukrainian subtitles. The Ukrainian language was suppressed under the soviet system--so there's not much on tv in Ukrainian, on non-cable channels, anyway.

The free channels do have old American sitcoms from the 80's and 90's--Married with Children, Friends, etc. But they're not dubbed and there aren't subtitles. Instead, you can hear hear the original soundtrack in English with someone SHOUTING IN RUSSIAN over the actors.

With subtitles in Russian, or English, people here could be listening to English and learning it. With subtitles in Russian, I could be learning Russian. But, as it is, nobody's learning anything.

Oh well, entertainment. Anyone my age or a few years older or younger might remember early episodes of SNL, w/Garret Morris on Weekly Update doing News for the Hard of Hearing: Jane Curtin intoning "our top story tonight", G. Morris, off in a corner of the tv screen, hollering "OUR TOP STORY TONIGHT!!!" That's what I think of when I see American tv in Kyiv.