TV in Australia

My TV viewing habits have changed dramatically since living here, and not by choice.  It’s practically all documentaries and world news on the hotel TV stations.

By definition, all the documentaries are covering some horrific unhumanitarian saga going on somewhere in the world.  I mean, nobody ever made a documentary on how they make cotton candy taste so good, right?  But if the person making the cotton candy had a horrible disease that made his head grow to eight times its natural size and blurt obscenities and was making the cotton candy out of sugar laced with toxic petrochemicals and was working 140 hours a week for 30 cents a day and was 3-and-a-half, then there you would have yourself an award-winning documentary suitable for Australian television.

I hate to say it, but my head’s going to explode if I see another documentary on refugees!  Okay I am sympathetic to them and all and to be fair I have learned a lot about their plights since living here, but after a long day of childcare sometimes I need to lighten up and not think and watch some hoarders and try to figure out why Bethenny is living in that crappy apartment if she is supposedly sooooo successful, you know what I mean?  What I would I give to just come across a Real Housewives of Fill-in-the-Blank show airing!  Any Housewives, even the New Jersey ones!  (Okay, still not New Jersey.)

And also, I have no:

·       DVR L

·       Info button L

·       Menu button L

It’s basically back to the stone ages when the cave people had to turn on the television and just watch what was on!!  Including the commercials!!  So you continually click around trying to avoid the commercials, thereby forgetting any show that you were previously watching, until the middle of the night when you suddenly sit bolt upright in bed – OMG!  How did that show end!  Did they ever catch that guy??!!??

In case you were wondering, the line-up is heavy with American shows.  Also British shows, and foreign films with English subtitles.  While all the announcers have those fetching Aussie accents, there don’t seem to be too many Australian shows other than an LA Law knock-off but with wigs in the court room (“Crownies”, which isn’t half bad), a few kiddy shows my kids have discovered (mixed reviews), and some cable-access-looking shows populated by people who haven’t seen a fashion magazine since the eighties.

When you watch the news from other countries you tend to feel sort of embarrassed for America.  They actually listen to stories about places other than what’s happening in their own backyard.  Even in New York City, such a city of the world, “broad coverage” generally means they will be including news of the tri-state area in their broadcast; and let’s be real about the three states, they mean only the parts that can be seen from the Empire State Building.  And then they’ll throw in some footage of Obama playing basketball and call that keeping an eye on Washington.  Sure it may be tangentially related to power, proximity and necessity, and I think we probably have the U.S. blinders on a little less than we used to, but still, it’s pretty dismal how near-sighted we are.  When Australia has the weather report woven into their news, they literally include the temperature for New York City, among a long list of other major metropolitan cities all over the world.

Although I have to say I don’t know what TV news broadcasts are doing since I’ve been away.  Did you guys know that your credit rating’s going to be downgraded and the U.S. is going down the crapper??