Today the regions of Franche-Comte and Burgundy changed to the rather alarmingly named TNT – Télévision Numérique Terrestre. We had been rather dreading the day that the analogue signal was to be turned off as we had suspected that our region was too mountainous or too near the border for us to receive TNT. We had never taken to watching much French TV anyway as the reception was always very poor and the only channels we did receive seemed to feature endless game shows.
It was rumoured that if we could not receive TNT then President Sarkozy himself would fork out and buy us all a satellite dish. But when we switched on today we found, joy of joys, perfect reception and more channels than we could ever have hoped for. We now get Arte which is a German-French channel which shows films in their original language. A bonus for me as I have always refused to watch dubbed films in any language. We also get nature programmes in High Definition which is just amazing.
I suspect that there is going to be a quantum leap in our understanding of the French language as henceforth it will now be a pleasure rather than a trial to watch French TV.
