State Run Television
Ok, that was the short version. Here’s the long version.
Most of old Europe has some form of Socialism, and in my experience, a culture of mediocrity. Sort of a “the nail that sticks up gets hammered down” mindset. They have a few cowboys, but not enough because their culture really enforces a sort of groupthink mentality.
That’s one of the reasons that many of the more ambitious Europeans still emigrate to the US.
As a system engineer, I’m always looking for feedback loops and how things interact.
And it hit me today. Most European countries also have television run by the state. Now in US television, we have a set of cowboys competing for ratings. In Europe, the TV is run by a combination of the bureaucracy and the intelligentsia.
So in the US, we get lots of sex and violence, and we end up with lots of cowboys. In Europe, you get all the excitement of a show designed by a committee, along with government propaganda to “conform”, plus some naked boobies occasionally. Despite the lack of naked boobs, some of the highest rated shows on the government television tend to be old US reruns.
It’s all the fault of state run television, its driving the cowboys out of their culture. Death to the BBC!
Comments (3)
lol are you kidding? since i’ve moved here from the UK i’ve been shocked at the lack of violence and sex on tv..beeps all over the place and blur’s everywhere else. programming seems so limited that its filled in with weekend long “marathons” and re-runs after re-runs, and then when they arent doing that they’ve got paid programming for the rest of the night
you dont seriously think we only have the bbc in britain do you? lol
luckily im only here for another 3 years whilst my wife finish’s university (shes american) then we’re running off back to the uk where i can finally get through an evening without any beep’s or blurs and with a news channel which isnt going to feed me a ton of biased rubbish :P
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January 9, 2005 11:56 PM
Posted on January 9, 2005 23:56
oop, one more quickie - i dont think britain is offically part of europe, i dont know any other fellow britains who consider themselves european, that is what the big conflict is about at the moment, if we should join with the rest of europe or not and adopt the euro.. so i guess thats why i was a little baffeld as to why you had said about the bbc…hmm
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January 10, 2005 12:03 AM
Posted on January 10, 2005 00:03
TV in the US has become more about cable/satellite and much less about broadcast.
True the BBC isn’t as bad as say, Swedish TV, but go read samizdata.net if you want to see some real anti-BBC stuff.
I mentioned the BBC because they’re the more famous of the state run TV channels (and probably the least useful given the amount of independent TV in Britain)
:-)
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January 10, 2005 10:53 AM
Posted on January 10, 2005 10:53