Germany and France want to extend Arte to the whole of Europe to strengthen the fight against disinformation

It's not really about art (although you can get some wild art stuff on there), more about culture in general.

It's got a ton of documentaries about all manner of things, movies you'd otherwise only find in arthouse cinemas, concert recordings from classical to hip-hop to death metal.

And it's taxpayer funded (or close enough to it). And it's one of very few cross-border TV station collaborations between public broadcasters in Europe (explicitly made to spread German and French culture across the border), which is pretty cool to begin with.

Check it out: https://www.arte.tv/en/

I really like Karambolage, it is a lets call it documentary which shows german-french peculiarities, like food, history or just how certain expressions developed. It is always with a little wink about our local uniqueness and tries to explain one side to the other. If you speak german or french, I highly recommend it.

One example from memory which always get used as example by our family if we try to explain it:

There was once a german-french kindergarten and in the winter the children were told to form groups and build snowmen. The groups made up of only german children played nicely and the groups of only french children played nicely, but the mixed groups somehow all got into an argument. The teachers then found out why: in Germany, the snowmen is made up of 3 snow balls, 1 for the legs, 1 for the torso and 1 for the head. But in France, a snowman only has 2 snowballs: 1 Torso and 1 Head. And the children tried to explain to the other ones, that of course they were right and the other side wrong.

I always hoped that something like Karambolage comes from every country and then they get shown to the others. This way we all learn about each other. And most imporant thing to learn: we are all human and not so different in the end.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arte

It is a project of european (mostly German/French) cooperation, providing primarily cultural content, always offered in both or more languages. No advertisements or common denominator slop.

What I think the other comments didn't emphasised enough is that Arte covers all culture. Not just artsy fartsy stuff, not just what the mainstream likes (but that as well), but really everything.

Due to them most of the Tarantino movies were available for free on YouTube for a while. They will show action movies, b-movies, cunts, dicks, erotica, French culture, German culture, hentai, Indian movies, Japanese video games, k-pop, lesbian dramas, mainstream, Norwegian metal, operations, pop music, quantum physics, reggae music, superheroes, technology, underground, vehicles, wrestling, x-rays, Yankees, zombies. And when they're done with all that they look for more things to pluck from the whole of human experience.

In Germany public broadcasters have a mandate to educate. And I think Arte is the only channel taking that really seriously.

Ok buddy.

Hey you rock

Ah nice I'll check it out!

Where does it say they're including them in programming?

Honestly I hope they do from time to time. The current board should still have the final say on what gets broadcasted but some sort of pan European documentary or something along those lines would be pretty neat.