@Nullo Bizarre, despite starting off with the sensible observation that the difference in enjoyment between American and European telly is down to cultural diffences, you then go on to state that “Most people who complain about American television will often complain about Americans in general”. This is an absurd generalisation, verging on the paranoid. I’ve many Americophile friends who come back from their holidays in the USA full of praise for many aspects of life there, but admiration of the telly isn’t one of them. Individual programmes are another matter, there are plenty of USA produced shows that are very good, but overall American television is seen as appallingly bad and infested with an absurd amount of appalling advertisements.
It is, of course, what we’re used to that shapes our prejudices – I’ve grown up with the BBC and find adverts on our commercial stations annoying. I’m not sure I could cope with American TV with more than twice the amount of ads.
Nowadays, when the BBC make documentary series with an eye to selling to the American market, e.g. Blue Planet, Life etc., they produce an extra 15 minute long “Making of” programme to tack onto the end of each show so that it fills the same one hour slot here.