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| Country | Basque Country (Spain and France) |
|---|---|
| Broadcast area | Worldwide |
| Network | ETB |
| Headquarters | Bilbao, Basque Country |
| Programming | |
| Languages | Basque and Spanish |
| Picture format | 1080iHDTV |
| Ownership | |
| Owner | Euskal Irrati Telebista |
| History | |
| Launched | 1 January 2021; 5 years ago (2021-01-01) |
| Links | |
| Website | eitb.eus/eu/telebista/eitb-basque |
ETB Basque is aBasque publicinternational television channel operated byEuskal Irrati Telebista. It was launched on 1 January 2021, as a result of the merger ofETB Sat andCanal Vasco. It broadcasts in bothBasque andCastilian languages. It broadcasts throughIPTV,cable and YouTube.[1]
It broadcasts programmes from the main Basque channels,ETB 1 andETB 2, abroad. Its programming is especially aimed at theBasque diaspora, both within Spain and in the rest of the world, particularly in Latin America, Europe and the United States.
The currentEITB Basque channel is the direct heir ofCanal Vasco/ETB Sat.
The latter began broadcasting in March 2001, as an international channel run by ETB and aimed specifically at America and its Spanish-speaking population interested in the Basque world, for example, due to genealogical links. As a result, it was mainly made up of original Castilian language programming from ETB2, interspersed with a minimal amount of content in Basque from ETB1, which was always subtitled in Castilian.[2] ETB carried out special events through this channel, such as theConcurso de Canal Vasco,[3] in which every summer (until 2012) trips to theBasque Country were raffled off to foreigners who were avid followers of its programming, who had to answer questions about it to win the prize.[4]
ETB Sat, on the other hand was launched before Canal Vasco, on 3 June 1996, under the name of Euskal Telebista, distinguishing itself from ETB 1 and ETB 2. It was initially aimed at Europe (including the Basque Country) via theAstra satellite. Unlike the later channel, ETB's own and original satellite channel had an equal programming schedule in both the Basque and Castilian languages, without, in principle, prioritising one language over the other, and with no Castilian subtitles for the Basque language content. On 16 October 1998, ETB Sat began broadcasts in the Americas, until it was split back to just Europe with the creation of Canal Vasco.[5]
On 1 May 2013, ETB Sat (the European channel) was removed from the Astra satellite to focus on cable and internet broadcasting.[6]
On 1 January 2021, as part of a reorganisation of the EITB group, Canal Vasco and ETB Sat were unified into a single channel, becomingEITB Basque, and as part of the continuity style reform carried out at the beginning of 2022, it was rebranded asETB Basque.