The Wire - Broadcasters

Broadcasters

HBO aired the five seasons of the show in 2002, 2003, 2004, 2006, and 2008, respectively. New episodes were shown once a week, occasionally skipping one or two weeks in favor of other programming. Starting with the fourth season, subscribers to the HBO On Demand service were able to see each episode of the season six days earlier. American basic cable network BET also aired the show. BET adds commercial breaks, blurs some nudity, and mutes some profanity. Much of the waterfront storyline from the second season is edited out from the BET broadcasts.

In the United Kingdom, the show has been broadcast on FX, and aired on terrestrial television on BBC Two. Although controversially it was broadcast at 23:20 and had no BBC iPlayer catchup available. In a world first, British newspaper The Guardian made the first episode of the first season available to stream on its website for a brief period. In Ireland, all episodes were aired on public service channel TG4 approximately 6 months after the original air dates on HBO. Season 1 was aired on 3e in late 2008 but there are no plans to show any further seasons. In Australia, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation purchased the rights to show the entire series on its digital station, ABC2. It commenced screening on September 1, 2009. In France it airs under the title Sur écoute ("wiretapped") previously on the pay channel Jimmy and later France Ô. The Polish channel TVN shows the series under the name Prawo ulicy ("law of the street").

The Swedish public service network SVT has shown the first four seasons of the series. In Norway, NRK aired the first season of the show in the autumn of 2007. In Israel, the show aired on the Xtra Hot channel, and on Yes Action under the name HaSmuya (הסמויה – The Covert Unit). The show airs in Canada on The Movie Network and Movie Central. In Finland the series is shown on Subtv and MTV3 channels under the name Langalla ("On the wire"). The show has been broadcast in Hungary on Duna TV since March 2007 under the name Drót ("Wire"). Since September 2008 the series is broadcast in Germany (Foxchannel, Pay-TV) under its original name, but dubbed into German. The show is also broadcast in Asia on Cinemax since May 2009. In the Netherlands and Belgium the show has started its first run on June 1, 2009 on the NBC Universal cable channel 13th Street. In the Middle East, MBC Action airs the show routinely. After being available only on DVD, the Croatian premiere of the series happened in September 2011 on HRT.