That is just dumb.
I was quite disapointed when I got my first widescreen TV. I though everything was 4:3, 16:9 or 2.35. Then everything I saw on my old TV with black bars would fill the screen, except 2.35-movies. Oh how wrong I was.
In my country the main channels have learned to embrace widescreen, and is actually both creating and broadcasting in 16:9. But there is a movie-channel that should get an apathy-award or something. Let's not discuss the content, that's another problem.
A movie-channel should be targeting people who likes to watch movies. People who likes movies most likely have widescreen. But EVERYTHING is sent in 4:3, letterboxed if needed. Even 2.35-movies is sent letterboxed. That's 326 lines on PAL. Even 700 MB movies is better than that.
It's an analog channel, and English is not our native language, so almost every movie has embedded subtitles.
Discovery Channel is also a bit weird. When I got my first widescreen TV I quickly noticed that some channels (like Discovery Channel) has black bars on 4:3, but not enough to be 16:9. But's why all widescreen TVs has a 14:9-mode (I think), wich is just between 16:9 and 4:3 (12:9). Or so I thought. 14:9 crops too much for me, so with a widescreen TV I get black borders on all sides on Discovery Channel.