Things I don understand

[Kyuuketsuki]

Well if this Wiki page is right: Secular Humanism I guess I'm not one, some of it applies to me other bits just seem to airy fairy philosophical to be relevant to my worldview.

I believe in survival of the fattest and as such I am well on my way

Kyu

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While the latter may seem nice, but since they provide the cable you have no choice in what's provided and so you get all the crappy channels.

You're American aren't you? If you had the state owned BBC then you would very likely think different ... you see it's like this here (and I'll only briefly touch on satellite because there's way too many):

We have 4 basic territorial channels (five I suppose but some us can't get the fifth) of which only the BBC ones are state owned. .

• BBC1: Pretty good most of the time but some programs are dumbed down because they need to compete with more popular ITV programs. Some excellent dramas and excellent historical dramas ... sometimes a bit too politically correct for my taste. Relatively few main films but a good selection of not so popular ones ... no adverts.
  
• BBC2: Often arty farty but nearly always high quality, a lot of documentaries, history programs and so on, excellent dramas, excellent comedy programmes (OK, I don't personally like Catherine Tate, Little Britain or that extraordinary league thing but I can still see they are well made) ... no adverts.
  
• ITV1: Game shows, soaps, reality TV and really, really naff dramas (that are more soap than anything else). Some big films and lots and lots and lots of really shyte adverts.
  
• Channel 4: Almost incapable of doing their own dramas, specialise in long running reality TV shows such as Big Brother (spit) and crud about hairdressing. Anything good they have on tends to be US and bought in. Surprisingly they did do a rather good Zombie series recently and they are not strong on political correctness (Yay!). Lots of adverts mostly really shyte.
  
• Channel 5: Nothing upstairs at all ... lots of really shyte adverts.

Digital channels ... variable, some good US stuff but generally just lots of game shows, reality TV, soaps , more reality TV, home style crap, more reality TV and many, many, many utterly crap adverts (mostly designed to make poorer people borrow money it seems). The only redeeming feature of satellite TV is the fact that there are so many channels there's usually something on that's watchable ... even they have adverts though, did I mention those?

So ITV could go ... wouldn't miss it at all, C4 isn't much better ... I'd keep all the BBC channels (including the digital ones ... BBC4 is absolutely class and no adverts). Sky 1 isn't bad but can vary. Some of the UK gold is OK and SciFi is occasionally watchable . Outside of that there's comedy channels (Dave is great) and then all that's left is Kerrang & Scuzz.

Anyway, to sum up, in the UK state-owned TV is way better.

Kyu