"Danny Wilde" <fuzakenbo@hotmail.com> wrote in message

> > They do make more money than I do, so if they're stupid, at least they
are
> > getting well-paid for it.
>
> So it's jealousy?

Yes. I wish I was born even more stupid so I could enjoy TV shows.

> I don't think any of the people
> here complaining about the shows being stupid would be able to easily make
> such a TV show themselves.

I make a living in entertainment. I agree with you, it's not easy to be that
stupid everyday. Being blond and having an accent helps a lot. In addition,
on the telly, they don't see their audience so they pretend to have fun on
their own.

> I wonder what Japanese think of things like situation comedies, almost
> unheard of in Japan.

Unheard ? Switch the TV on, and tell me what you see...

I often show to my students a French TV program. French TV is not great, far
from it. It is also stupid with B-series, talentos, games and
pseudo-journalists making the news, but they also broadcast movies, plays,
concerts,animations, documentaries on tons of topics,  talkshows, about 30%
of the programs are imported, 30% are plurinational, etc. Their conclusion
is usually that they'd find more things to watch on one day of French TV
than on one week of Japanese TV.

I find the offer on Japanese TV is very narrow, the number of topics really
reduced, and I even have the impression it's shrinking over the years. A
journalist working for NHK told me he had a similar feeling and they were
trapped in a system that made that they'd systematically imitate the
competitors (=make a documentary on X one week after another channel made
one, invite talento Z because another channel just invited that person...).
That explains why if you see something monday on Japanese TV, you'll see it
again wednesday....

Japanese radio being even worse, many people switch on the TV as they'd
switch on the radio in another country : to hear a little noise in an empty
room, to hear a summary of the news while they are putting varnish on their
nails... But I don't know many TV addicts around here. (maybe it's a good
thing)

>Perhaps if there was an active newsgroup for Japanese people
> there would be some Japanese saying how stupid our TV shows are.

There are tons of active groups for Japanese people.

> (Another
> mystery about Japanese people is why they don't like newsgroups.

They like them. They call them blogs. Use google to read about TV.

Kuri