French Radio / TV

Laurenpedro

Hi - I'm trying to improve my French (excuse me for not writing in French but I don't have enough confidence just yet ). Anyway, I was wondering if it is possible to listen to French radio in Ireland and if so, at what frequency and am/fm etc should I be able to get the French station. Also, we are thinking of getting a satellite for the TV and I was wondering if we did so, would we be able to tune in some French stations ?

Merci beaucoup
A bientot

Ricco

I don't know if we receive french tv with satellite but
you could listen most of the french radios on internet, like http://www.radiofrance.fr/services/aide/difflive.php or U can watch news from http://videos.tf1.fr/video/news/lesjt/?trk=1&e=8

Call Me Jimmy

If you get sky digital then you'll get TV5.

Calina

Lauren,

whether you'll be able to pick up French television or not via your satellite dish depends on where you're pointing it. Off the top of my head, I think most of the French stuff is on Hotbird, but I can't remember for sure. There's a satellite board around somewhere, so the mod of that might be able to give you more details.

Most French radio is available on the web.

Radio France is a good place to start, and it has links to all its main stations, and its local stations.

I also listen to Europe 2 and Cherie FM. RFM should work as well but unfortunately, I've never succeeded. Try also NRJ if you're into pop music.

For television on the web, you'll get news on TF1, France 2 and France 3. CanalPlus also has some of its stuff on the web, but I find their site very difficult to navigate. Otherwise, LCI, which is TF1's rolling news network is available online if you've got broadband. it costs something like a fiver a month if I remember rightly. But they have a load of video on line as well in case you don't want to pay for always on French news.

Additionally, it's worth having a look at what television series you can get on DVD via Amazon.fr or FNAC.fr - some of it is trash, but some of it isn't. I got Dolmen and Kaamelott last year, and I'm going to order Engrenages sometime soon I think.

Other than that, Sky provide TV5, as do NTL Digital, and it's on the analogue service in some Chorus areas.

Other television channels in France include arte and M6. I don't know what their online offerings are like though.

shortlegs

Just get yourself a cheap satellite dish, receiver and sat finder (Ebay,Lidl?) or get a satellite expert to install it for you (Golden Pages). Aim at Astra 1 satellite at 19.2 degrees East and you will get about 6/7 good French language tv stations and several radio channels

shortlegs

Also should mention thatb it@s Free-to-Air ie no subscriptions

Steffano2002

shortlegs wrote:

Also should mention thatb it@s Free-to-Air ie no subscriptions

What channels are they shortlegs? I know TV5 will probably be one of them but what about the others?

BTW: Did you know that TV5 is the second most broadcasted channel in the world (after CNN I believe)?

monkeyfudge

My radio station rebroadcasts RFI every morning from 8am to 9am.

NEARfm 101.6, it's a Dublin Northside station but if you have a decent enough radio you should be able to pick it up on the Southside of Dublin. We also have livestreaming on the website.

And we have our own French language programme on Saturday at 5pm called Quartiers Francophones. It's been featured on our podcast before:

http://nearfm.ie/podcast/index.php?id=82

I was talking to the presenter only today and there should be more of his programmes going up on the podcast in future.

Laurenpedro

Thanks everyone. That info is great and I'll be spoilt for choice now with all the options! (no excuse for me not to improve my French anymore!!:o ) Thanks again.

Shinto

Hi Laurenpedro,

After i came home from France last year, I wanted the same thing as you. So i researched the satellite room (go to HOSTED on the top of your screen, then ICDG, then SATELLITE) for a few weeks and then set up my own dish. I lived in Galway at the time.

Its the best way to get French TV and radio. Its free too once you set it up cos many french channels are Free To Air ("FTA"). I had about 27 francophone TV channels...ok most were ****e, but i had at least 10 good quality ones which i always used to watch (TV5 FBS, TV5 Europe, BFM news, LCP, RTBF, Euronews, Canal Plus etc). There are many french Radio stations on the satellite dish too.....but i never botherd with them, there was always something interesting on the TV).

I spent about 300 Euro for everything....dish, digital reciever, LNBs, cable etc. I set it up myself. I point the one dish at 2 satellites......"Astra 19 degrees East", and Hotbird "13 degrees East". If you've any questions then just Private Message me....i dont want to bore the ****e out of everyone by talking about nerdy satellite stuff here. Vive la France.

p.s. Now i live in Seoul Korea, but get my francophone fix by "BFM.fr" and "TV5.fr" on the web...and i chat to the odd francophone canadians one finds here in Seoul. Not many french though! Where are they?

Laurenpedro

Thanks for that Shinto! Hope you're enjoying Seoul - crikey you are well travelled 300 Euro sounds great (especially considering people are paying nearly that every year just for NTL) so I'll definitely give that a look! (Since you're away, I could always check out where you live and "borrow" your one !;) ) Btw - I've come across a great site: mylanguageexchange.com if you want to chat to people in French or other languages (are you doing Korean now ) . I've already started chatting online with some French natives and (when the ol' confidence increases a bit) I'm going to install SKYPE and talk with them as well. Merci beaucoup.

Steffano2002

Shinto wrote:

Hi Laurenpedro,

After i came home from France last year, I wanted the same thing as you. So i researched the satellite room (go to HOSTED on the top of your screen, then ICDG, then SATELLITE) for a few weeks and then set up my own dish. I lived in Galway at the time.

Its the best way to get French TV and radio. Its free too once you set it up cos many french channels are Free To Air ("FTA"). I had about 27 francophone TV channels...ok most were ****e, but i had at least 10 good quality ones which i always used to watch (TV5 FBS, TV5 Europe, BFM news, LCP, RTBF, Euronews, Canal Plus etc). There are many french Radio stations on the satellite dish too.....but i never botherd with them, there was always something interesting on the TV).

I spent about 300 Euro for everything....dish, digital reciever, LNBs, cable etc. I set it up myself. I point the one dish at 2 satellites......"Astra 19 degrees East", and Hotbird "13 degrees East". If you've any questions then just Private Message me....i dont want to bore the ****e out of everyone by talking about nerdy satellite stuff here. Vive la France.

p.s. Now i live in Seoul Korea, but get my francophone fix by "BFM.fr" and "TV5.fr" on the web...and i chat to the odd francophone canadians one finds here in Seoul. Not many french though! Where are they?

Hi Shinto!

Could you please provide a full list f channels? I'm really interested! And are you sure you were getting the Canal + aired in France that is half cripted half uncripted???

Shinto

Hi there.

Yes, i had the "Canal +", but as you rightly guessed it was indeed half encrypted, half un-encrypted. Still, half a good channel is better than one full s**te one.

This website is good, it lists what countries beam out Free To Air (FTA) channels so you can see whats available from France, Belgium, Algeria etc.
http://www.lyngsat.com/freetv/France.html

From what i remember i had:

Good channels:
* La Chaine Parlimentaire (a good politics channel from france)
*RTBF (a good Belgian channel)
*TV5 FBS (good tv5 channel catered for France, Belgium, and Switzerland audience)
*TV5 Europe (good channel aimed at everyone in Europe....about 90% of the time it showed different programmes than TV5 FBS)
*Canal + (half the time unencrypted so you can watch good tv)
*ARTE France (excellent channel for documentaries)
*Demain (french channel with a local socio/economic focus....industry, employment, farming in France)
*Euronews
*BFM (24 hr french news channel...equivalent of skynews)

Average channels:
*Direct 8
*3A Telesud (pan african francophone channel)
*M6 Boutique La Chaine
*TV8 Mont Blanc (a lot of programmes about farmers and skiing in Mont Blanc region....regional TV....so not the best)
*KTO (catholic tv.....still good documentaries)
*EBS (live goings on in EU parliment, and EU commission......but the channel is not on for many hours of the day)

S**te channels:
*La Locale
*TFJ (jewish tv)
*Telif (programmes aimed at people in Ile de France region)
*Best of Shopping (shopping channel with a french soundtrack)
*Beur TV (programmes aimed at young muslim community)
*NT1 (80s and 90s cheap american programmes dubbed into french)
* Canal Algérie (only some programmes in french, other in Arabic) (interesting to watch the algerian evening news en francais though)
*2M Maroc (morrocan tv, mainly arabic though, ocassional french)
*Zik (crap hip hop music)
* ??? (Some astrology programme that i cant remember the name of)

Thats all i can remember.