English language TV (including Scottish/English football)

[starchief]

Just thought it might be worth giving out this info on TV channels. I subscribe to ART, which, for the full package, is about GBP 50 or 60 for six months. For that, there's a bunch of serial, movie and sport channels.

Another package is Showtime/Orbit but that's about GBP20 a month. The big advantage though is the English Premiership, plus the distinctly average BBC Prime but the better Showtime Comedy.

Anyway, there is:
SERIES
Free: Dubai One, MBC4, Fox Series, MBC Action
ART: Granada, Hallmark

MOVIES
Free: Fox Movies, MBC2, MBC Max, MBC Persia
ART: TCM, StarMovies

DOCUMENTARY
ART: Animal Planet, Nat Geo, Nat Geo Wild, Nat Geo Adventure, Discovery, Reality (RTV)

CARTOON/KIDS
Free: Space Toon English, MBC3 (Spacetoon Arabic, Space Power and AlJazeera Children can also be suitable)
ART: Cartoon Network, Boomerang, Jetix (though mine doesn't work), Baby TV

SPORTS: (NB ART will be closing some channels down as they have merged with Al Jazeera)
Free: Al-Jazeera 1 & 2 (mostly Arabic/Africa, with some EU), Abu Dhabi Sport (Arabic commentary on the SPL), plus other Arabic dominated sport channels, like Dubai, Saudi, Nile, Kuwait, Modern etc etc
ART: Al-Jazeera Sport+ (8 channels show the English Championship and Cups, plus the SPL and Spanish, Italian, Dutch leagues. Maybe more. They also show Man Utd, Chelsea and Arsenal channels, plus the Champions League and Europa Cup). ART Sport 1-6 (mostly African/Arabic), ART Prime (mostly cricket or Man U channel), ESPN, ESPN America, ESPN Classic (lots of old Premiership matches)

OCCASIONAL ENGLISH (usually a film at night)
Kuwait 2, City 7 (used to be so much better with the Fast Show, Open All Hours, Fry & Lawrie etc etc), PTV Classic (old B&W movies), Ishtar, Infinity 1 & 2, Future TV, OTV (there's a couple of them though with the same name - one Egyptian, one IIRC Jordanian or Syrian), Dubai (different from Dubai One and used to show Dr Who)

NEWS
Free: BBC World, CNN, Al Jazeera International, Euronews, France 24 (there are more, such as Russia Today, CCTV from China, PressTV from IIRC Iran etc)
ART: Sky

Naturally, there are masses of Arabic TV that can occasionally show English language shows whilst Hotbird has a load of Italian channels.