Is American tv really this bad?
 

I love Charlie Brooker. Also yes.

Big up on Sheriff John Bunnell.

While crime is at the higher end of the spectrum for an industrial nation, its nothing unusual. Reporting and coverage on the other hand...

A related issue is content, its quite puritanical. You can have as much violence as you like but there better not be any sexuality. Just look at the film ratings: G, PG, PG-13, R. Children, Families, older Children, 'Adults'. The only real distinction is the level of violence - and even thats getting blurred when you consider films like Transformers and The Dark Knight, or maybe a few more dirty words. Being from a Hollywood studio or independent can also have a suspicious influence.

Most of it is much worse.

that's totally untrue , pretty much every popular program in america is highly sexual. just because they usually don't show the fucking doesn't mean it isn't mentioned every 5 seconds.

also this should be obvious, but if there's violence it's not "puritanical" not to mention gambling, drinking and all the other fun stuff the tv shows anyone who will watch

LOL to catch a predator is addictive, though yeah, it's a bit of entrapment!!!!

The laugh track makes it even better!

No that titillation, objectification, etc. Quite different. Try finding something thats not being juvenile.

The only good show currently on American tv is Xavier: Renegade Angel.

what's different? the tv has been pushing garish sexual ideas on me since i was 6. there's lot's of sexual content on tv, i can't be sure about the actual numbers but i'd suspect there's more sex than violence

Isn't British TV exactly the same? Don't British cable companies regurgitate all the shite that Brooker's decrying? I have to go out now but I'll summarise what probably would've been quite a tiresome tirade:

1) Brooker is a prick who writes like a prick.
2) Britain is as bad, if not worse because we pretend not to enjoy re-enactments of sexy, sexy rapes.

Is that offer of marriage still open?

charlie brooker's zombie thing on channel 4 was really good.

for any foreigners who want to know what British TV is like here is a description of the typical television programme from the UK, I watched it last night.

British novelist Marcel Theroux is fascinated by Wabi Sabi, a theory of Japanese aesthetics in which imperfection and transience are the touchstone of beauty.
The Japanese say that if you can understand Wabi Sabi, you will understand Japan and the Japanese. Yet at the same time they have immense difficulty in explaining the concept themselves, so Marcel travels across Japan, from Tokyo to Kyoto and then on to the mountains of Fukui, trying to unravel the meaning of this baffling concept that is at the heart of what makes the Japanese tick.
It is a challenging, funny and ultimately moving journey that starts under the bright neon lights and craziness of Tokyo and ends in an austere Zen Temple in the snowy foothills of Japan's eastern mountains.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00j8bkc

That zombie thing was quite good but I increasingly find him unbearably smug on that Screenwipe programme. A typical case of a man who could only function in the media taking easy pot-shots at it.

Regarding that Wabi Sabi programme, I dunno. It seems quite interesting if you ask me. Hardly typical though. Surely it'd need a celebrity chef, an interactive public phone-vote element and Vernon Kay to be that.

hello kitty girl is cute

I thought typical British TV involved Jade Goody?

Quite possibly true, until this morning at least.

It's not over until after the funeral I'm sure.

The only time I really enjoy watching British tv is in the afternoon (which is hardly ever 'cause I'm at work at that time), when you have all those programs tailored for middle England. They are stereotypical but more informative than the other faceless crap. I wish they would show repeats of stuff like 'Keeping Up Appearances' on a Sunday again.

This is precisely my point. It's not that all British TV is bad - I fucking love Masterchef and the 'Cancer-addled black lesbian paraplegic holistic paedeatrician' phase of X idols - but Brooker perpetuates this rizla-thin notion that British people are somehow above the voyeuristic terrors of American TV, and yet the PRIME MINISTER has just 'led tributes' to a dead nonsense. Programmes about gardening, nature documentaries (oodles of them are made by the BBC and farmed out internationally), parochial soap operas we're good at. But Brooker is just... the Paul Morley of Charlie Brooker's house.

Herr Rail - Aye.