Kzach lives in Australia. What is Australian TV designed to do?
Bore people to death.
EDIT: I should probably qualify that a bit more. Until recently, we have had five free-to-air TV stations that only really broadcast in the big cities and everywhere else just syndicated programming from them, most of which was already syndicated from the US & UK.
Our government mandated a certain minimum of Australian produced content, I think something like 10% or thereabouts, and so the channels just filled it with whatever crap they could put together for the lowest cost. Generally speaking, Aussie shows have been pretty awful. There were some small successes over the years, some fan favourites, but very, very, very few ever reached anything near the production and writing quality of US/UK shows.
That has somewhat changed in the last few years as our industry has seen a lot more foreign investment and new studios and production facilities have opened (especially in Queensland). We tend to produce our own versions of syndicated US shows like Biggest Loser, Australian Idol, etc. and they're generally very polished and up to the standards of overseas shows. But more importantly, we've seen a large expansion of locally produced content through the digital band changeover as many 'new' channels (I think there's about 25 or something now) have opened up. Lots more viewers and more opportunities have created a much higher level of production quality.
Keep in mind that Australia is, relatively speaking, only a bit smaller in area than the continental US, is 90% desert, is in the middle of nowhere, and only has a population of 20something million compared to the 250something million of the US. So we do alright with all that taken into account.
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