List of Best Free Sites to Watch Spanish-Language TV Online
Yes, one of the many advantages that most Latin American TV shows have over English-language ones is that the hosts are often female, and if they are female, they are always hot–news anchor, host of a silly reality/game show, weather-chick, whatever. Why deny that it works? It does, and I say if it works, use it! 
Ok, well today that’s not really what we’re here to talk about (but sexy weather-chick on the left there got your attention, didn’t she? See? It does work!). Today I’m going to give you a list of my favorite websites that you can use to help you learn Spanish via watching Spanish-language TV (news, shows, telenovelas, whatever). Only criteria is that they must be free, I’m not going to recommend anything you have to pay for (it’s just too easy to find free stuff and therefore no one’s going to be willing to pay for it–hey, I wouldn’t, I don’t blame you). I’ve divided it up alphabetically by country. Here we go…oh, and if any of these links are dead or you know of a site that I left off please leave a comment and let me know, I’ll fix it, I promise–which reminds me, I just want you to know that I actually checked each one of the sites below to make sure that they were working and actually had streaming video available, unlike every other list of Spanish language TV/radio station sites I’ve managed to find online (all of them had links to broken sites, all of them).
Edit (March 16, 2012): Big News! By far the best site to watch Spanish-language TV online (and yes, it’s free)
Hulu just launched a Spanish-only version of their site called Hulu Latino that contains only Spanish-language programming (news, reality shows, game shows, late night stuff, comedy, drama, etc.), all available to view for free! Very cool, love how high-quality it is and how quickly everything streams, check it out here: Hulu Latino.
Argentina:
Canal 5 Tucuman (a little disorganized but there are tons of videos on there you can watch)
Canal 6 TV (good one, lots of videos of recent news events)
Canal 26 (scroll down to “videos destacados”)
CMTV (Music videos, TONS of stuff on here)
Aruba
Teleruba (click on “Teleruba Live!” in the menu bar at the top)
Bolivia
Costas (look under “videos noticias” in the middle of the page there)
Chile
Canal 54 LivTV (click “Ver Señal Online” and it should load up a streaming video player)
Colombia
Canal CNC (dear god that is the ugliest website I’ve ever seen before in my life!)
Costa Rica
Cuba
Cubavision Internacional (links to video feeds are on the right where it says “en vivo”) Edit: As of 12/17/2011 their site is down, but I’m going to leave this link here because it is their official website and should come back up at some point.
TV Marti (based out of Miami but it’s entirely targeted at a Cuban audience hence its inclusion under the “Cuba” section instead of the “United States” section)
Cubasi – Same story, as of 12/17/2011 they’re down, but who knows when they’ll come back up again.
Dominican Republic
Bonao TV Canal 12 (requires VLC player to view, which I highly recommend you get anyway, it’s the best video player out there)
Yuna Vision Canal 10 (same story, requires VLC)
El Caribe (scroll down and look on the right where it says “Transmisión en vivo”)
CDN (really nice, simple setup, video player works great)
El Salvador
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
Televisión Educativa de Mexico
Sistema de Radio y Televisión Mexiquense
RTV de Vercruz (click on “Televisión en Línea”)
Grupo Fórmula (scroll down to “Noticias en Video”)
SinTesis TV (click on “TV en vivo acqui”)
Multimedios TV (scroll down to “Videos más recientes”)
Nicaragua
Peru
Bethel Television (look to the right where it says “Señal en vivo” and choose either low or high quality)
JN19 (I hope you like Jesus…)
Puerto Rico
Wapa TV (not available in the U.S.)
TelemundoPR (scroll down to where it says “videos”)
Spain
RTVA (tons of videos right there on the front page)
Popular TV (to get the live feed click “Emisión en Directo” in the menu bar at the top)
Telemadrid (nice clean setup, fast load, recommended)
Congress TV (live feed of Congress, Parliament, and archives – menu is on the left)
Informativos Telecinco (videos are all down the right-hand column of the page)
RTPA (live feed is on the right)
Cinetube.es (thanks to Ramses over at Spanish-Only.com for this one).
United Kingdom
BBC’s Spanish Language TV Section – Just awesome, includes Spanish programs from the BBC with downloadable transcripts (!!) as well as Spanish language news and TV shows, absolutely worth checking out.
United States
DominicanYork (hover over “Videos” in the top toolbar and select a section)
Azteca America (scroll down to the “Video” section)
LATV (tons of videos on here)
MTV Tr3s (Music videos – MTV owns them)
HITN TV (educational programming)
Uruguay
Venezuela
Globovision (click “Señal en vivo” in the menubar at the top)
VTV (click either “Señal en vivo” or “Videos” in the menubar at the top – by the way, this is the official government TV station)
WTF…I don’t even…
I don’t know what this is, but it’s funny as hell and it’s in Spanish, definitely have a look (though, be advised, it probably qualifies as NSFW): Sexy Spanish TV
Radio
This list was already really long with just sites that had streaming TV (a lot of them also have streaming radio, by the way), I didn’t want to make it any longer or prolong publishing it any more by trying to put together an inevitably equally long list of Spanish-language radio stations’ sites, so I’ve cheated a bit and just put links to other people’s lists of such sites where you can listen to Spanish-language radio below. Again, I can’t vouch for how many of the links on the below listed sites actually work, but most of them should be good-to-go at the very least.
Multilingualbooks.com’s list of Spanish-language radio stations with live feeds online
E-Spanyol’s list of 600 Spanish-language radio station sites categorized by country (see why I didn’t want to try to do a list here?)
Live-TV-Radio.com’s got a good-sized list organized by country
Other Languages
Unlike the above list, I can’t vouch for whether or not all the TV stations’ sites listed on the sites below work or not. If you’re looking for TV stations you can watch online in languages besides Spanish, check out:
Multilingualbooks.com’s Foreign Internet Television page
wwiTV.com – Biggest compilation I’ve seen yet, truly impressive.
Like I said in the introduction, if you’ve got any additional sites that I missed or any of the above links stop working, please let me know in the comments as this page will be continuously updated to keep it current.
The secrets of how to use free online resources to teach yourself Spanish, from home, in just a few months - Also: Here are the internet's Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources
I run a newsletter entirely about how to learn Spanish online for free where I send out every cool new tip and technique that I learn to my subscribers and not only do they get it before anyone else but frequently they get things that no one else ever does. Additionally, I've spent a great deal of time putting together a 3-part series of articles for you on the internet's best free resources for the Spanish-learner that you'll get when you sign up for my newsletter--in addition to all of what you get below, I'll be sure to send you any updates about cool new sites, resources, and learning tips and techniques that I come up with:Part 1: An article called “Spanish Learning Systems: Should you bother?” about whether or not you should even bother with a pre-packaged Spanish-learning system (e.g. Rosetta Stone or Pimsleur) and, if you do decide you want to, where you can go online to find programs that are literally 1/10th the price of older, more common systems like Rosetta Stone and Pimsleur but actually work even better. Also, at the same time, you’ll get a separate e-mail with a very long list of my favorite Top 33 free online Spanish-learning resources (tools, references, sites with free lessons, articles, blogs, forums, etc.) that's far to long to include here, especially with all the other stuff I've got below that's just on this site alone, and I'd like to offer it to you (completely free, you don't have to do anything other than sign up) right now.
Part 2: I explain what language exchanges are (essentially they allow you free access to an unlimited number of native speakers to practice your Spanish with), why they're absolutely essential if you're teaching yourself (I'm serious when I say this: it's impossible to get fluent without them if you're learning a foreign language on your own), how to use them, and which ones are the best.
Part 3: I cover chat rooms which are specifically devoted to connecting you with native Spanish speakers who want to learn English so you can chat with them in Spanish (and they'll help and correct you) and then you do the same for them with their English (these are completely free to use, but rather hard to find, but I'll tell you where the best ones are!). Sign up below!
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Andrew
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