Say what you want about France (its: cuisine, philosophers, fashion) but their TV just downright sucks. I never tried to find out why this is the case, 2 theories I came up with: 1) people are too busy spending entire evenings eating out in restaurants so no one watches anyway - hence all the crap on TV. 2) The french penchant for recycling the same sh*t over and over again.
The rest of the world might be getting used to checking in on cnn.com 100 times a day for 5secs at a time but news move in slo-mo in the grand nation and possibly viewers are not satisified until a subject has been discussed at very great lengths. America may have "The View" but France has probably 10 mega-panel TV shows. The format is simple: invite at least ten celebrity guests, make them sit around in a semi-circle, let the host drop a keyword and it's on (see picture) ... This way, you'll find public figures from all kinds of backgrounds chip in their 2 centimes on anything from crazy dictators in northern Africa to Hollywood star infidelities. You'll have those shows occupying essentially all the prime slots.
I forgot theory 3) ... so much money is wasted on producing panel shows that there's no cash left to actually dub a couple of decent TV shows from across the pond ;-)






