Television has played a big part in my discovery of some aspects of American culture for the past 2 years.
For a bit of context, we have a satellite subscription with Directv which includes more than 200 channels (news channels, sports, movies, entertainment, etc but not HBO for example).
I am not going to say that television is a perfect mirror of society but it certainly displays a lot of what is attractive to people, considering shows don’t stay on if they don’t have an audience (although sometimes shows are dropped even with a good audience, just look what happened to Roseanne). You could have what you think is the best show ever, if nobody shows up to watch it, no channel is going to buy it.

[Disclosure: This post is about my personal views on French and American Television. I have no affiliation with any satellite service provider or TV show I mention in this post, just thought you should know ;-)]

Me and my French TV

Admittedly I was not much of a Television person back in France, mainly for 2 reasons:

1. I was working full time during the week, and sometimes during week-ends, so my TV watching was more or less 2 hours at night during the week and maybe a bit more during the week-end if something interesting was on.
2. I was not subscribed to satellite or cable. I only had access to the “free” TV channels and had a subscription specifically to Canal+, which is a HBO kind of channel.

A quick review of the French Television landscape

French Television has obviously evolved a lot over time. I was born in the 70s and still recall the days where we only had 3 channels. At that time those were TF1 (1935), Antenne 2 (1963) and FR3 (1972). New free channels appeared overtime, such as M6 (1987), Arte (a French-German cooperation, in 1992) and La Cinquième (1994).

More recently, the move from analog (TAT) to digital broadcast (TNT) saw the birth of new free channels. There are to this day, through the TNT, 32 public and private national channels and 41 private local channels (source in French here).

When I say free, I mean you don’t need a monthly subscription, but it is not actually free: there is in France such a thing as a state-subsidized television. Tax payers who own at least one television screen pay a yearly amount (138 euros in 2017) on their tax to support public television. The private free channels are subsidized through commercials.

Apart from TNT (Télévision Numérique Terrestre) broadcast, you can subscribe to cable, satellite and Internet channels (around 300 channels through these). The first subscription-based channel, Canal+, appeared in 1984.

Before the days of Netflix and other streaming services, what you could find on French channels was a mix of movies, game shows, scripted and unscripted series, news, documentaries, talk shows… Pretty much what you can find here on your local channels.

Another big feature of French television derives from the “French cultural exception”.
That means that your broadcast needs to feature at least 40% of productions in French (not dubbed in French, they have to be created in French). American imports represent between 45% and 55% of film products in France (to be compared with 60% to 90% in other European countries). By the way that is also true for French radio stations (40% of the broadcast has to be French songs). If you want to know a bit more about cultural exception, head on to this article from Wikipedia.
Oh and everything is dubbed in French… So say good bye to the characteristic voice of actors and actresses…
It is always a shock to me to hear American actors in movies I have only seen in French talk in their ‘real voice’ here.

What I enjoy the most about American Television

• No more toggle between the French and the English language. Yay!
• Rerun of old TV shows, especially those I did not get a chance to watch back in France, like That 70’s show, All in the Family, etc.
• The cooking channels: I like to cook and it is fun to watch some of the cooking shows, I am fond of MasterChef, especially the Junior Edition but also Chopped, Best Baker in America (similar to the French “Le meilleur pâtissier” and my all-time favorite Cutthroat Kitchen which is sadly not broadcasted anymore (Alton, please come back!)

What I find weird and/or annoying

• Commercials: coming from a country where you usually have zero to two (max) commercial breaks during movies, I can assure you it was quite a cultural shock watching TV here! And they can come at any time, it is not uncommon for a TV host to interrupt (although they are pretty good at that) a guest because there is a commercial break coming up. It doesn’t matter if the conversation was interesting; the break has to happen. I think I might need an entire post to say what is different about commercials between the 2 countries (lawyers ads, medical ads, etc.).
• The editing of movies for time: that drives me crazy! To me (and probably to the people who made those movies…), a movie is a creation that a lot of people have put a lot of time (and money) in. I think it is kind of disrespectful to cut bits and pieces of those creations to accommodate the time slots on the channel, and the numerous commercial breaks.
• There are Reality Shows about everything: moonshining, tracking monsters, real life murder cases, celebrities’ lives and deaths, swapping lives, etc. The list goes on and on.
• Also surprising is the “political” color of most channels,  everybody knows the political affiliation of the big networks and nobody seems to care much.

Love it or hate it, I have to recognize the major impact American Television has on foreign broadcasts.
Although France has this “French cultural exception” going on, the French Television does broadcast a lot (around 50%) of American productions. And the good news is that, now, you can watch them in their original language!