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In order to receive ChannelD's programming, you must have suitable digital satellite equipment and a paid subscription to the service. An annual subscription in the US costs $24.95 per month ($299.40 a year, payable in advance) plus a one-time activation fee of $25.00. A typical satellite dish installation and receiver (Schüssel und Empfänger), according to ChannelD, runs about $300. You can get the required digital TV equipment from a local satellite dealer or ChannelD of North America. You must also have a special decoder chip, a so-called smartcard, installed in your receiver to watch ChannelD. Once you purchase your dish and receiver, they're yours, but your first year of ChannelD will set you back about $625 plus tax if you don't already have the required hardware.

Compare ChannelD with
DW's German TV

Although I definitely welcome the arrival of ChannelD, I see a few potential problems. No doubt there will be many expat Germans and other people eager to pay $24.95 per month to watch German television programming that has previously been unavailable in North America. (Siegfried and Roy of Las Vegas, ChannelD's first US subscribers, certainly can afford it!) But $25 is a bit pricey for a single TV channel that only offers six hours of programming daily (plus two audio-only music channels), even if it is in German and repeated several times a day. Compare that to the $22/month that DISH Network charges for 50 channels, or the $32/month that DirecTV gets for 105 channels. But keep in mind that ChannelD is working with a much smaller subscriber base than the millions that DirecTV and DISH enjoy.

However, certain programming areas come up short on ChannelD. For instance, sports fans will only be offered a twice-weekly 60-minute review of Bundesliga soccer highlights, with no complete games at all. Your $25 a month won't get you popular soap operas like “Lindenstraße” or “Gute Zeiten, schlechte Zeiten” either. Instead you'll see lesser known Seifenopern such as “Löwengrube” (set in Munich) and “Liebling Kreuzberg” (Berlin).

So what else won't you see on ChannelD? Although ChannelD's schedule is far better than nothing, don't think you're going to be watching anything close to the prime-time schedule that Germans can view. Current TV hits in Germany such as the quiz show “Wer wird Millionär?” or big hit German movies are just too expensive for ChannelD. ChannelD Sendungen such as the venerable “Tatort” (over 400 episodes since 1970!) and “Maischberger” are good, but ChannelD will only show older episodes of those shows.

ChannelD also gives short shrift to news coverage. The schedule shows periodic “Nachrichten” broadcasts that last all of three minutes! (The two radio channels will also broadcast news.) Sure, the emphasis here is on entertainment, but wouldn't it be great to watch the nightly German news, even delayed? Although the well-known German late-night-show host Harald Schmidt is an investor in ChannelD, you won't see his popular Sat.1 show in the ChannelD lineup, supposedly because, to quote Schmidt: “Diese Show setzt zu viel Wissen um tagesaktuelle Ereignisse in Deutschland voraus.” But wouldn't German-speaking Americans be able to keep up with current events in Germany if ChannelD offered a daily news show like “Die Tagesschau”? Too expensive, thanks to the very hard-nosed attitude of German broadcasters when it comes to selling their TV rights. Maybe Herr Schmidt should kick in a few more euros to help out!

Next: Suggestions for ChannelD

NOTE: This article was written prior to ChannelD's bankrupcy in late 2002. For current information about how to receive German TV in North America, see: Adventures with German TV in the USA.

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