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Ethiopian television is a small, concentrated market, and that shapes everything about how it looks and sounds. The public broadcaster, ETV, has long been the spine of the system, carrying national news bulletins in Amharic, general entertainment, and the kind of ceremonial coverage that other countries farm out to rolling news channels. For decades it was effectively the only game in town, and the habits formed in that era still show: viewers expect a single authoritative evening bulletin, read in formal Amharic, rather than the shouting-panel format that dominates news in much of East Africa. Regional broadcasters have since loosened that grip, and a wave of private and satellite channels now serve diaspora audiences alongside the domestic public feed. Religious broadcasting is the quiet giant of the schedule. Both the Ethiopian Orthodox Church and Protestant and Muslim broadcasters occupy large blocks of airtime, especially on weekends, with liturgy, preaching and devotional music that run for hours rather than fitting a neat half-hour slot. It's a rhythm closer to radio than to the tight formatting of Western TV. Language is another dividing line. Amharic dominates, but the country's federal structure means regional channels broadcast in their own languages, so the dial is far more multilingual than the capital's national feed suggests. Sports coverage centres on domestic league football and athletics, with distance running treated as genuinely national programming. And unlike neighbours where dubbing is the norm, much imported content still carries subtitles, keeping the Amharic soundtrack reserved for local production.