>I enjoy watching BBC America even if most of the series are out of date. It irks me though that the 2nd season of Dancing with the Stars will be airing this week. That's an American show! They're not showing a British version of Dancing with the Stars (which is a copy of the British BBC's Strictly Come Dancing I think anyway) - their showing the 2nd season of our version! We've had 5 seasons already. Give me a Break! I'd rather see 10 year old British series than watch what I can already view on a dozen American channels.


That was one of the things that struck me during my longest stay in England -- the number of American reruns on the BBC. And what shows! My goodness, no wonder they think we're a bunch of yobs. It was heavy on cops and robbers and nighttime soaps -- Chips, Dynasty, and the like. (Complete with a voiceover at the start of Dynasty -- "Next on BBC 2, Dinnasty"). The only good one I can remember was Moonlighting, running several weeks behind.

The other big thing going on at the time was a carpet bombing approach to AIDS awareness. The British government delivered an AIDS information booklet to every household in the country and the newspapers and TV stations were also part of it. Almost every night there was another show about AIDS on the BBC. One of the newspaper columnists wrote that the information campaign had been a rousing success -- 99.9% of the public were aware of AIDS and 88% were convinced they had it.