version française

One of the things I missed most when I first came to France was the BBC. There are few things more frustrating than listening to the BBC World Service on short wave radio – in Strasbourg at any rate. The signal comes and goes, there is all sorts of interference, and you spend more time trying to tune in than you spend listening. If that isn't bad enough, depending on the time of day, the frequency changes. Under such circumstances listening can hardly be enjoyable, you really have to be desperate – out at sea in a gale and waiting for the shipping forecast for example – to make it worthwhile. I clearly remember one evening when my wife was out on call and I was home alone and feeling somewhat lonely, as can happen when you are home alone in a foreign country on a Saturday night. We didn't have a TV in those days – before having children it hardly seemed necessary – and I felt like hearing some English news, or anything vaguely English to keep me company. The BBC was worse than ever. I even tried attaching the aerial to the central heating pipes, in a desperate attempt to improve the reception, but all to no avail. I ended up listening to a news bulletin on “Voice of America”, all the way form Washington DC, and a wildlife report on Radio Canada International. Better than nothing I suppose.

Things could hardly be more different now. Before returning to France in 1997 after two years in England, I wrote to the BBC to ask if there was any way of receiving Radio 4 in France. I had heard there were some parts of France that picked up the BBC on long wave. I was informed that the UK radio channels could be received on the Astra satellite system that broadcast to most of western Europe – and all of France! You can imaging my feelings the first time I aimed my new satellite disk in the right direction and heard the dulcet tones of the Radio 4 presenter booming through the hi-fi system in our living-room! Officially it was against the rules to fix satellite dishes to the walls of the apartment building we were living in at the time, I hid it at ground level, behind some bushed where it was hardly visible...

A couple of years ago I switched on the satellite receiver to listen to the news and all I got was the following announcement, repeated over and over: “As part of the switch from analogue to digital, this service is no longer available”. This was rather annoying at first as digital receivers were still rather expensive (about six times more than analogue ones) but it felt like money well spent once I had set up the digital system and realised how many more channels there were, and how much better the reception was.

At the same time we installed our first digital TV system, with a motorized dish and a smart card for the French TPS (Télévision Par Satellite) satellite TV service. This offers BBC Prime (showing all the best BBC series for adults and children), and now has a multilingual option for many films and for some channels – Boomerang for example (now part of the Sky package in the UK -showing all the classic cartoons), allowing you to select the audio language. We pay about 30 euros per month, for an excellent selection of recent films, almost all of which are available in their original language!

The motorized dish made it possible to receive channels on the Astra 2 satellite system (which broadcasts Sky Digital) as well as those on Hotbird (which broadcasts TPS and BBC World), and at the moment this allows reception of all the Free To Air (FTA) radio channels (BBC radio channels, independent stations such as Virgin Radio, Heart FM, Classic FM etc.) and many FTA TV channels that are broadcast on Astra 2 (CNN, ITV News, BBC Parliament, TCM etc.). The problem with FTA channels is that they are prone to change: they can suddenly become encrypted or simply disappear altogether.

The safe bet is to take out a subscription with a satellite TV company such as TPS, or a local cable TV company, if you don't want to be disappointed. BBC Prime and BBC World will keep you in touch with Britain, and they are not going to disappear. You will have to enquire whether the service you subscribe to also offers films in English. I personally recommend TPS in terms of the service provided and value for money. We pay around 30 euros per month.

Under no circumstances should you take out a subscription with Sky Digital if you want British TV in France : it is illegal to take Sky reception equipment outside the UK! You need to be a UK resident to subscribe, and apparently from the middle of July all of the BBC channels are to be broadcast from a satellite that no longer covers the whole of France – so even with a Sky viewing card reception will be impossible.

In July 2003, the BBC broke off its subscription agreement with Sky, which means the BBC channels have become FTA (free-to-air) and you no longer need Sky reception equipment to receive them. To respect international broadcasting agreements though, the BBC only broadcasts from Astra 2d, which covers the British Isles, but does not cover all of France. Depending on where you live, and on the size of your dish, it may well be possible to pick up the BBC channels.

> To find out more about the Astra 2d reception area and dish size required click here

> For more information on the split with Sky Digital visit: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/2843069.stm

> For more information on Satellite reception including free TV and radio channel listings by reception area, visit the excellent website http://www.lyngsat.com

> BBC Radio 2 and Radio 4FM have recently moved to Astra 2b which covers a wider footprint than Astra 2d and covers the whole of France: for the latest information from the BBC visit: http://www.bbc.co.uk/reception/dsat_astra2b.shtml 

Life in France:

> moving to France
> finding accommodation
> finding a job
> driving in France
> staying in touch: receiving English TV and radio in France
> learning French
> getting married in France
> becoming a French citizen
> my own experience

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