I spent pretty much the entire day working in the apartment. I had an abstract accepted for the Media 2009 Conference here in Athens. I have until March 30 to write the paper. So, I worked on that today. For today I'm just taking pictures from Kim's camera and posting them. Kim's watching Men In Black on TV, so I'll take this opportunity to write a little about TV here.

This is the church a couple of blocks from our apt. The bells ring at 7 a.m 7 days/week.

There are two main state-run television channels. ET-1 is the main channel, and its a broad-based network that does news, sports and all forms of entertainment. Most of the content is in Greek but there is a little content imported from the US in English, with Greek subtitles. Why they choose to carry Hannah Montana in Greek and Young and the Restless in English I don't know. You could argue it's because kids wouldn't get the English but then why did they run the NBA Slam Dunk competition in Greek tonight?

The second main state channel is NET (used to be ET-2). Their focus is more toward the cultural and informational programs that you would normally associate with public broadcasting. Of course soccer and children's programs are both cultural, so those air on NET. There seems to be less imported product but there is still some: movies, mostly.

There is a third public-owned channel ET-3. The channel is headquartered up north, in Thessaloniki, but except for news programs it's hard to see how it's any different. They carry The Bold and the Beautiful (in English) and Bob Ross continues painting on ET-3 (in Greek). Another north-centered channel is Makedonia TV. Again, news may focus more on Macedonia, but hard to claim it has a regional emphasis carrying English reruns of Bewitched and Married...With Children.

There is actually a fourth government channel, Vouli TV, but it's not operated by the Greek TV service EPT, but rather by Parliament. It's a sort of Greek C-SPAN, but over the air.

Coastal shot. Does this need a caption?

The private channels dominate. Top of the heap is Mega. They use a very little bit of US content - movies - but the rest is almost all Greek. I'm impressed that such a small country (only about 11 million people) has such a robust local television production industry.

Same shot, zoomed out.

Mega is followed by Antenna. They have it all: Greek programs, US imports including Lost and Greek-produced versions of international formats, such as Are You Smarter Than a 10-Year-Old (why the name change I don't know).

Kim bought some "wild greens" at the market.
I'd call them "weeds." I swear she had me pull
the same things out of our yard in Muncie.

Star, Alpha, Alter and Skai all follow pretty much the same process: mostly Greek programs with a few imports: House, Nip/Tuck, Sex and the City, Top Chef and America's Next Top Model all air in English. Oprah they dub into Greek.

This entire counter at one of our three grocery
stores is all feta. Other cheeses are at a different
counter. This one is all different types of feta.

There are a fair number of satellite subscribers in Greece, but no cable television.