European TV

Good question. See, I was there for the past few days (hence my lack of blogging), and following the success of my previous photo expeditions to LA and New York, including my New York TV advertising feature, I thought I’d give you a brief rundown. With pictures.

So the first thing to note is that Meo is the king of telecoms over there. As well as mobile phones and broadband, they also offer TV services over the phone line, via satellite, via cable and even over 3G/4G. Meo is everywhere, particularly when it comes to WiFi hotspots. However, NOS does pretty much the same thing, including offering a whole range of premium channels, largely featuring US imports, and so has a lot of cash to spend on advertising. Here, for example, towering over the monument to Luís de Camões and this Easter parade is Claire Danes, the star of Segurança Nacional (aka Homeland).

Traipse all over Lisbon and you’ll spot NOS adverts for everything from Modern Family and Castle through to Vikings and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. However, confusingly, Homeland/Segurança Nacional actually airs on one of Fox International’s channels, which does its own advertising, too. Top of the heap of its advertising and appearing on the wall of pretty much every Metro station in Lisbon? Empire.

But NOS, Meo and Fox aren’t the only channels in Lisbon. AXN is out there, too. Top of its promotional considerations and dominating most bus stops and street signage is Chicago Fire.

“But, Rob,” you might ask. “Aren’t there any programmes made in Portugal?”

There are a few, at least, including news programmes, although most of the ones I saw advertised were for kids and were cartoons. The only truly ubiquitous advert was for Portugal’s very own version of Masterchef, which was about as common as Empire was on the Metro and airs on TVI, Portugal’s fourth terrestrial TV channel.