TV in Honduras

Whatever place I’ve visited in the world with access to TV, the complaint is always that there’s nothing on. It seems that the more channels there are, the less there’s to watch. (How lucky I was then to grow up with only two channels… In black & white, too! And I’m not even that old…)
In Copán Ruinas we have about 84 channels (that differs by the day) and depending on what you’re into, there’s a lot to enjoy. If you like Telenovelas, you’ll be in heaven here. If you want you soul saved by one of many evangelical pastor (whispering, screaming, preaching or screeching), you’re in the right place too. For news, not too good… There’re a couple of Honduran news channels, the difference between them that some are ultra-right, others are ultra-left. Sometimes it’s hard to believe they’re actually covering the same event. Last Saturday for example: On Globo TV, Manuel Zelaya’s return into Honduras was turned into a Mel video clip. On the conservative channels, Mel’s victory for democracy had to compete with reruns of old soap series.
I rather watch CNN. Not my favourite news channel in the world, but Anderson Cooper is (much) better than nothing. Unfortunately, the American CNN has disappeared of the cable for a while now, and we’re stuck with “CNN en Español” which is more of a hobby club than a news sender. But a thousand, no a million times better than the local news!!! It has been a while since we had a local channel in Copán Ruinas itself, so now we have to do with Cabañas TV, based in a neighbouring municipality. The news consists of anchorman Salazár sharing the latest news (or gossip), sometimes accompanied with unedited footage, preferably with a lot of gory details. A couple of weeks ago I wanted to see the Chamber of Commerce’s announcement of the activities in/on 2012 but first, unannounced, there was a “conference by a famous Guatemalan doctor” who explained for half an hour and unfortunately with a very graphic power point presentation how he treats haemorrhoids. Hurray.
No, than that very first “news channel” we had in Copán, years ago, offered by Publicidad Flores. With his face a little bit too close-up, Flores would announce that today there’d be both national and international news. Zoom out. Flores sitting behind a desk.
“We will start with national news.”
And then he would start reading the headlines of the newspaper. Brilliant television!