Question for all you non-Americans :)

The UK we have FIVE US channel which is on the so called freeview box, but we only get things like the mentalist 'great program' and NCIS 'crap' and HOUSE 'great program' just shows like that not you're sit-coms or anything like that.

your tv is as crap as ours

We do get a decent amout of non-US programming here int he US, atleast on my service. BBC America and several movie channels show subtitled films and lots of smaller stations will import shows from overseas for a lot cheaper than making their own. PBS shows a lot of british shows.

Course then there are the native language channels, 4-5 spannish and the occasional asian channels that come and go...

It sure could be more though. Especially in the movie dept!

I don't watch tv, but I'm aware of the local programming here in Malaysia.

On-the-air tv:

Channels 1-2 belong to the broadcast arm of the government. I believe they adhere to a policy which says 70% of the content must be local. This usually translates into foreign cartoons during the afternoon and foreign movies during dinner. Recently they started showing reruns of 80s shows like Knight Rider (hell yea) in the right-after-midnight-news slot. Saturday afternoon appears dedicated to Bollywood. I saw some Mr Bean episodes some time back and I believe they recently aired a particular Jackie Chan movie for the 4th time (albeit over the course of several years), so they're not terribly concerned about getting the "latest" crap.

Channels 3-6 are private but adhere to similar policies. The main difference being the foreign imports are usually more recent. E.g. a popular tv series from USA might be aired a couple weeks after. One of the channels seems to be an MTV clone as every time I'd ever checked it is either playing a music video or the brainless pretty face of the season is nattering about current fashion or other trends.

Satellite:

Then we have Astro, a satellite provider. From what I've seen they carry the usual suspects (Hallmark, HBO, ESPN) so I think this should be familiar to you guys in the 'States. I don't have a subscription but one of the neighbouring apartments does. Which explains why I use headphones. Inconsiderate jerks.

smarteyeball said:

Kirsch said:

Ohhhhhh I just thought of another question! What do you guys think of the American version of "The Office"?

Better than the original. Ricky Gervais is best taken in very small doses.

This is just all sorts of wrong. Original Office is THE Office. American doesn't even touch it.

I think the thing is, particularly with comedy is that the rest of the world at this point is very Americanised. So for us to watch U.S. shows, we get it. But Americans can't be expected to get everybody else's. I love British humour, but I can imagine most people across the drink wouldn't care for it.

I love a lot of U.S. shows but when it comes to comedy one thing I prefer about U.K. based series I that they are a lot shorter. Most of our shows only have like 6-7 episodes per series. In contrast, most U.S. shows have anywhere up to 25! I feel it helps to keep things much more fresh. One of my favourite U.K. shows that I'd recommend to everybody is Peep Show. It has had 6 series but only 36 episodes, and so I find that it's still very fresh. Where as U.S. shows like I said, could rack up the same amount of episodes in less than 2 series.

As for U.S. TV. I have Sky and nearly every other channel is built on U.S. shows. I'm glad to because they tend to be higher quility. As for my native Northern Irish TV... Most of it is terrible, I actually cringe at our accent when it's on TV.