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American Television in Other Countries

Vic Vega

Graduate Poster
Vic Vega
Joined
Aug 24, 2007
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1,186
Since this forum has a great mix of people from around the globe, there is something I was curious about and thought this would be the perfect place to ask... :)

Where are you from and what American television shows are very popular or have been very popular in your countries?
 
Australia gets a pretty good flow of US shows. Most hits in the US seem to reflect the same level of popularity in Australia
 
I grew up and live in Australiaand I can tell you that US TV Shows have formed the majority of my TV viewing over the last 48 years. In fact I find it hard to recall many TV shows that I watched that weren't American...

As I child I watched:
Bugs Bunny Cartoons, Addams Family, The Munsters, Bewitched, I Dream Of Jeannie, Lucy, Brady Bunch... etc etc etc

I think the sitcom peaked as an artform with Seinfeld and that Larry David is about the only person left on Earth who can still manage to sqeeze something new and interesting out of the sitcom format.

I think the only non-US shows I watched as a kid (apart from local news and variety shows) were Skippy and The Tomorrow People.
 
In my view US TV shows have lost the wide appeal they used to have in Australia. Police procedurals and forensic shows seem to do well, but the biggest raters are local versions of Master Chef and similar "reality" shows.

Personally, I watch pay TV nearly exclusively, and I love almost every HBO production, which don't tend to rate on free-to-air TV. Even the Sopranos was relegated to graveyard slots.

When growing up, like Brainache it was all US shows, but I'm a few years older, and can add Rin Tin Tin, Casey Jones and the Texas Rangers. ;)
 
Vic Vega said:
Where are you from and what American television shows are very popular or have been very popular in your countries?
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I am from Finland, and I guess all the most popular American shows other than sitcoms are broadcast and popular also here. The Bald and the Beautiful, Fiends, Wimpsons, Adulterous Housewives, CSI, Doctor House, Miami Vice, Dynasty, Dallas, there have always been some of them. Not that I would watch them, I only watch sports from tv, nothing else really. For that matter, pay tv channels offer NHL, NBA, NFL etc. and of these NHL is popular here, we are a hockey nation and our best players are in NHL, so it is natural for us to be interested in NHL.
 
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Here in Sweden, American sitcoms are the most standard thing you will find on television.
 
I watch The Walking Dead and used to watch Lost, living in South Australia.
 
I'm in the UK, and we see quite a lot of US-produced TV - most of it concerning people rushing about with handguns, which is boring as hell. I watch mostly animation, a field where the US is definitely the leader.

Biggest disappointment: the US co-production of 'Torchwood', a show I had always liked in it's original form.
 
In Greece we get all the usual suspects, from CSI to Lost and from Oprah to Mythbusters. If you also include the subscribe channels then we also get all of the National Geographic, Disney, Animal Planet etc. I don't know which are the most popular, I guess the same ones that are the most popular in the US.
 
There was legislation quite a few years ago that mandated that commercial television channels show a certain percentage of Australian content. I think it was 16%, but I could be wrong.
 
I think we in Oz get the US' mainstream popular stuff, but not much of the real quality. Second-rate sitcoms and soap dramas abound, but episodes of, say, The Wire? Nope.
 
China gets very little US made TV on the broadcast television channels, but they're very popular on pirated DVD and online streaming sites like Tudou and Youku.
 
Way back in the 60s, when I was in the army in Germany, we had one television on the entire post and it only worked sporadically.
However, one night I caught part of a Lone Ranger episode...With dubbed German.
"Was ist Lohs, Kemosabe?" Pretty entertaining....
 
Bikewer said:
Way back in the 60s, when I was in the army in Germany, we had one television on the entire post and it only worked sporadically.
However, one night I caught part of a Lone Ranger episode...With dubbed German.
"Was ist Lohs, Kemosabe?" Pretty entertaining....
Click to expand...

You haven't lived until you've seen a cowboy film with dubbed Welsh.
 
Up here in the Great White North, we get a lot of American TV. Not just the programming, but many full channels. About the only thing that is different is that our cable supplier plays Canadian ads instead of the American ones.

There are times I don't notice I'm watching an American station, until the news comes on. It's interesting how loud and sensationalist US news broadcasts are.

Also, when I was living in France, it seemed that the most popular US show was 'How I Met Your Mother,' especially with the early 20s crowd.
 
arthwollipot said:
There was legislation quite a few years ago that mandated that commercial television channels show a certain percentage of Australian content. I think it was 16%, but I could be wrong.
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Canada has a similar law, which is probably the only thing keeping a lot of Canadian shows on the air. Not that they're low quality, but a show aimed at 250 million Americans has a much greater profit potential than one aimed at 30 million Canucks.

We get a few British shows, and the occasional Australian show, but most of the programming is American.

In Ukraine, a lot of the programming is badly-dubbed US shows- House is very popular. And when I say "badly-dubbed", I mean it- the original voices can be heard under the dubbing, and the dubbed voices are usually monotonous and seem to all be done by the same man.
 
Here in bonny Scotland we love American comedies.. Favourite at the moment is The Big Band Theory.

The 80's we lapped up Dallas, Dynesty and all the great cop shows.

All the CSI shows are very popular too.
 
Sceptic-PK said:
I think we in Oz get the US' mainstream popular stuff, but not much of the real quality. Second-rate sitcoms and soap dramas abound, but episodes of, say, The Wire? Nope.
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We get, unfortunately, what rates. Sitcoms out-rate The Wire.
 
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