Cuba airs US TV series.

Cuba will air the award winning US TV drama the Sopranos and ongoing series Grey's Anatomy, said the Communist youth newspaper, Juventud Rebelde, reports Reuters (April 21, 2008). HBO's The Sopranos depicts the life of a New Jersey Mafia boss and his family and will be broadcast by state-run TV on Tuesday evenings; ABC's Grey's Anatomy, which follows the lives of doctors working in a hospital, will be broadcast on Thursdays. Juventud Rebelde said the new offer demonstrated the state TV's "proven rigor in the selection of dramas of high ethical quality and powerful presentation." Despite Cuba's 50 year ideological confrontation with the US, its movies, music and TV programs remain wildly popular and US movies dominate the TV and theater offer. The Sopranos, which concluded in 2007, and Grey's Anatomy are not the first US series to be picked up on DVDS, brought to Cuba and broadcast. House, Friends, and Everybody Loves Raymond have entered Cubans' living rooms, and the forensic series CSI is a huge hit on the island where programming is weighted heavily toward educational, variety and children's programming, propaganda, Latin American and Cuban soap operas and sports.