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Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by piker on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:39AM (#19571469)
It's hilarious that the author is citing television. Is there anyone on the Earth who believes, e.g., British television is better as a whole than US television? They must really like slow-to-never-developing low budget, single camera angle crime dramas.

[Edit: Apparently so! Quite the controversial statement. However, when voting, do consider what percentage of television consumed outside of the US was produced IN the US and vice versa.]

Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by richardwhiuk on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:41AM (#19571497)
The endless interruptions of adverts every 5 minutes does tend to encourage me that the experience of US television is worse.

Some of the actual content is much better, but the experience of watching television in the US is drastically worse.

Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by irrational on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:45AM (#19571548)
If you are seeing commercials, you are doing it wrong.
Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by UpperBodyEimi on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:58AM (#19571695)
I'm confused by this, how do you avoid commercials. From watching the off NFL game there's even like pre-commercial commercials. "Brought to you by <some american car company> and <drink> the official drink of <whatever> and McDonalds - I'm loving it".
Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by jki275 on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:12AM (#19571847)
tivo, netflix, amazon prime, hulu, etc.

I don't watch network tv anymore. Well, I don't actually watch TV at all, but you get the picture.

Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by UnpossibleJim on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:32AM (#19572052)
According to demographics, the market share of people watching broadcast television vs people watching "alternative media" (read streaming) was less than 50% as of the end of last year, I believe, according to some studies (though they were surveys, so it's hard to say exactly how accurate they are, but the pendulum is definitely swinging)

EDIT:

In an American survey, but this did include YouTube as a form of streaming media

Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by UpperBodyEimi on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:25AM (#19571981)
I don't know about Tivo, but are all of the rest of these not available in Europe...?
Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by jki275 on Thursday April 04, 2019 @09:31AM (#19572037)
Well, I'm using Tivo just to refer to any timeshifting device, there are plenty. I thought the others were available in some form in EU, but I could be wrong.
Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by murph-almighty on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:46AM (#19571554)
I think they have us beat on the reality cooking show front- British Bakeoff is an oddly positive show while the judges are still providing a valuable critique of the contestants skills. Compare this to to Chopped, which just feels rushed and intensely competitive and cutthroat.
Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by piker on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:49AM (#19571583)
This is fair. However, note the "as a whole" above.
Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by robenkleene on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:50AM (#19571599)
One, the sentence you’re responding to doesn’t say anything explicit about TV being better there, and two, I haven’t lived lived in Europe for over 15 years now, but yes when I did, the television was incredibly different and yes of course that ends up having a cultural impact. Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine[1] does a brief analysis of this between the US and Canada.

[1]: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_for_Columbine

Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by microcolonel on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:58AM (#19571688)
Michael Moore's impression of Canada is ridiculous, and he's convinced Americans that the U.S. has an exceptionally high rate of massacres committed with guns, when this is not the case, even among highly developed countries.
Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by k__ on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:44AM (#19571536)
I just know one person in my peer group who watches "classic" television.

Most people just switched to online on-demand streaming services.

Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by Tor3 on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:59AM (#19571703)
> Is there anyone on the Earth who believes, e.g., British television is better as a whole than US television?

Well, I do. Although my interest is more in science/nature TV than dramas. In the past Discovery Channel would be about.. discovery. Science. Nature. Then it became a reality show. Just as one example. I don't find anything to watch. British television has always been, and still is way above anything anywhere when it comes to science and nature. And to be honest I prefer the British crime dramas over the US ones too.

Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by philk10 on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:45AM (#19571550)
as a Brit who moved to the US, yeh, I love my VPN service so I can watch British TV, very few US programs I watch. And never ever live TV with the endless commercials
Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by westpfelia on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:42AM (#19571506)
Yea but muh Sunday Tatort!
Re:Why Don't Americans Understand How Poor Their Lives Are? by pteraspidomorph on Thursday April 04, 2019 @08:58AM (#19571679)
Hell yeah, I'm neither american nor british and I much prefer british shows. I do also like Netflix originals though...