Kanalen viser filmen.

Their basic forms are kanal and film.

In the sentence, they appear as kanalen and filmen, which are the definite singular forms:

• kanal → kanalen
• film → filmen

So if you look them up in a dictionary, you would usually search for kanal and film.

Because Norwegian usually adds the definite article to the end of the noun instead of putting a separate word before it.

So:

• kanalen = the channel
• filmen = the movie / the film

For these nouns, -en is the normal definite singular ending. Both kanal and film are masculine nouns in Bokmål, so -en is exactly what you expect here.

In Norwegian, the is often built into the noun itself.

Compare English and Norwegian:

• the channel → kanalen
• the movie → filmen

This is one of the biggest differences from English. English uses a separate article before the noun, but Norwegian very often uses a suffix.

Viser is the present tense of the verb å vise, which means to show.

So:

• å vise = to show
• viser = shows / is showing

Norwegian present tense is simple to form in many cases, and -r is a very common present-tense ending.

It can cover all of those ideas depending on context.

In Norwegian, the present tense often does the job of both:

• English shows
• English is showing

So Kanalen viser filmen could mean:

• The channel shows the movie
• The channel is showing the movie

Because the subject is kanalen, it also strongly suggests the sense broadcasts / is airing the movie.

Yes, in this sentence it is.

The pattern is:

• Kanalen = subject
• viser = verb
• filmen = object

So it follows a basic subject–verb–object order, just like English:

• The channel shows the movie

However, Norwegian main clauses also follow the V2 rule, which means the verb normally stays in the second position. For example:

• I kveld viser kanalen filmen.
• Tonight, the channel is showing the movie.

Here, I kveld comes first, so viser still stays second, and the subject kanalen moves after the verb.

Yes. Kanal can mean channel in more than one sense, and in some contexts it can also mean canal.

But in this sentence, because it shows a movie, the natural meaning is clearly a TV channel or possibly a media channel/platform. A water canal obviously cannot show a film, so the context tells you which meaning is intended.

You would say:

En kanal viser en film.

Here:

• en kanal = a channel
• en film = a movie / a film

So the difference is:

• Kanalen viser filmen. = The channel shows the movie.
• En kanal viser en film. = A channel shows a movie.

This is a useful comparison because it shows how Norwegian marks:

• indefinite with en
• definite with -en

A rough English-friendly pronunciation would be:

kah-NAH-len VEE-ser FIL-men

A few notes:

• kanalen has stress on the -nal- part
• viser starts with a long vi- sound
• filmen is pronounced more or less as it looks, but with a short, clear final -en

A more approximate phonetic version is:

[kaˈnɑːlən ˈviːsər ˈfɪlmən]

Exact pronunciation varies a bit by dialect, but that will get you very close.