AFN- American TV in Europe

One interesting thing about being an American on a Spanish naval base is being able to watch American tv in our house on base. The cable here is AFN, or the Armed Forces Network. It is American programming that is available worldwide for troops who are deployed to the Middle East, or stationed in Europe, Asia, or the Pacific. The good part is that we can watch tv in English, and for free, while we are stationed here. It is also available to Americans living off base, if they use a converter provided on base. The downside? Well, there are only 10 channels, one of which is the TV guide channel, and another which shows slides advertising activities on base. The others? Well, there is 1 sports channel which plays some games live, or replays others, depending on the time difference. So this year we could watch the Super Bowl live... If we want to stay up until 1am for kickoff! There is one news channel, which cycles all the major news shows-CNN, Fox News, NBC, etc. for one hour at a time. There is a movie channel, a "family" channel, and one called AFN Pacific which is time adjusted for people on the opposite side of the globe. In general, the programming is designed to be popular for young men. So it doesn't take long to flip through the channels and determine that... there isn't much on.
One other amusing aspect of AFN is that it is a non-profit government program, so there are no commercials. Sounds nice, but the commercial breaks are replaced with military infomercials. These are lousy quality ads made by 20 year old men, giving advice on how to do everything from carrying out military rules, to using basic safety, to not flushing medicine down the drain. Most of them leave you confused and thinking WTF? afterward. There are also "All Hands Updates" with news from around the military, and current prices for gas and currency conversion.
So what do we watch? Well, the best way to watch the movies and shows you actually want to see is by using Netflix, Amazon Prime, or a subscription service that lets you pick and choose shows you want to see, so that you can catch an entire season at the same time it is being aired in the States. Of course, to use these services overseas, you have to convince your computer, tv, or Playstation that you are still in America. There are some illegal ways to do this for free, but you can use legal methods that charge an annual fee to give you a legitimate American vpn. We use StrongVPN.com, which for about $50 per year lets us convince our computers that we are in New York so we can watch American programs. It's similar to the Vonage program that convinces one of our phone lines that we are in Pennsylvania.
So in case you are considering being stationed out of the country, don't worry, you can still watch American tv. It just takes a little extra work.