What is the difference between American and European television?

A lot of Americans find European TV pretty crappy, too.
The difference mostly boils down to culture. Americans and Europeans have different backgrounds, and so find different things entertaining.
That said, what European TV I’ve seen has a lot of imported material.

Most people who complain about American television will often complain about Americans in general. Fluther’s own @ragingloli would be a good person to ask; he tends to disdain most Americanisms.

No Jersey Shore in Europe.

@rawpixels But they do have their variants on American Idol and have shamelessly broadcasted at least two seasons of Survivor.

I’m just thankful we have Sarah Palin’s Alaska here.

American television tends to focus on quantity over quality, and its heavy censorship and dependence on sponsors sacrifices quality even further.

@Nullo now you’re being unreasonable, @rangloli is a Star Trek Junkie, isn’t she? Star Trek is fantastic. But American TV is of a diabolically low standard, from what i saw in comparison to British TV, in general, However America produce some really innovative shows that are top quality, smart and addictive, everyone likes them, but i could not stand the commercial interruptions, that doesn’t help much, it feels more like there is a pause in the commercials every so often for the drama to resume, rather than the other way round. This is the problem with America, nothing is really produced unless it is commerically viable, there are those who buck this trend and take risks but they get very little support and certainly not from the government, directly or indirectly, God forbid. That the Government should spend a fraction less on the military to invest in Art and Culture. But the trend in America is to treat art as entertainment and as capital rather than as culture for culture’s sake.

@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.

American are use television just for business and European are use for charity.

@Joshuajohn ha, thanks for saying in one sentence what took me an age. I really like Democacy now, is that a TV program? the young Turks and CSpan is it? they are interesting, intelligent and fun, but are they on the fringe?

American television has lots of channels but I find the programmes a bit dull and bland with a few notable exceptions. What I really like about British television is that there are no adverts on the BBC channels.

Obviously the language used may not be English. I love watching foreign TV while traveling, when I have time. You get an idea of how they view the way people live in their country. Any shows that depict daily life in some way: occupations; home life; terrain; city scapes etc. can be very revealing. I may not understand the language, but I look at the set decor and property details and learn a lot.
I realize the question wants me to compare programming, but I find so little in U.S. programming that interests me. I probably wouldn’t like foreign programming any better if I knew what they were saying.

The frankness about sex. Compare Coupling to Friends, for instance. Six people hanging out (one group in a bar, the other in a coffee shop), and the conversation often turns to sex. But in Coupling, the characters aren’t afraid to say “sex” or talk very specifically about sexual things. In Friends, everything is an eye raise or an “if you know what I’m saying.”

Well, I don’t know about TV in general, but the British have a completely different sense of humor to Americans, so the sitcoms don’t translate well. To them, our sitcoms are too much slapstick pie-in-the-face kind of humor, and we find theirs to be very dry. However, I LOVE British sitcoms but then I love dry humor. Keeping Up Appearances is my all-time favorite. I don’t really like any American sitcoms, especially not the new ones. They get more and more silly and more and more raunchy every year.

@Skaggfacemutt I am in the UK and Frasier is one of my favourite shows. Most American sitcoms seem very wishy washy to me and don’t get my interest.

@flutherother I am not a fan of Frasier, but I do like Seinfield, one of the very few American sitcoms that I like.

Number of commercials. Quality of world news.