You may have gathered from the links on the left that I occasionally follow the blog of Rachel Lucas - an extremely right-wing American who I naturally disagree with on just about everything, but she's brilliantly witty and a very entertaining read. She's currently on this side of the Atlantic, and is delighting her readers with a daily account of the alien world that is "England". (England is exactly where she is, but I put the word in inverted commas because I have no great confidence she's mastered the distinction between England and the UK yet - in fact I'm quite certain she hasn't.)
Anyway, in her latest post she assures her loyal fans that there's no danger of her returning to Texas with an English accent - a) because she spends the bulk of her time with her husband 'Rupert', and b) because 75% of British TV is made up of American programmes anyway. This is quite a startling estimate, and I've been trying to get my head round it. Can it possibly be true? I can only assume she's mainly been flicking through some of the more obscure cable/satellite channels, because it seems to me the main channels are still predominantly British. Or have I not been paying enough attention? Admittedly, children's programming now seems to be hideously Americanised.
I remember in the early sixties an aunt who was about sixteen at the time started saying "yeah" instead of aye. The films, the music, the tele - yeah - it really has gone that far dude.
ReplyDeleteAww shucks, thanks for your two cents, dude. I appreciate there's a fair bit of it about - but 75%? On primetime BBC1, for instance, you'd very rarely see an American show.
ReplyDeleteThink of the last ten films you saw. How many were from the US?
ReplyDeleteOh absolutely, nobody would dispute that. But I was thinking specifically of television.
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