>I'm willing to bet that the majority of people now have cable or satellite or even internet tv, and listen to music either on satellite radio or the internet. The amount of foreign content is unlimited. My daughter and her friends (myself included) watch foreign films all the time and listen to music from other countries regularly. What America are you living in ? :o)

North?

Frankly, there is not one single community that shares everything and knows the same stuff. It's all fragmented - even rock'n'roll doesn't exist, it's broken into dozen sub-genres which don't even cross-pollinate anymore, because there's no channel which would play the in-between-the-subgenres music. Ditto for news, and everything else.

>They even get most of their news from the internet these days...

With all other sources of news becoming vehicles for selling ad space, I bet the remaining one is the internet, for now.

>I think there are a lot of people watching foreign film and keeping up with the news,

But even they stopped posting here :).

I'm not sure I met any of them, but that may only mean they're so confused they don't let themselves be heard. Those who know everything there is to know and are so adamantly sure of it (as you mention below) are loud enough to create the illusion that this confused group exists.

>but then there are a lot of folks who could care less about foreign film and only care about foreign news if it affects them here at home.

And no it is not just film and news, it is... the rest of the world have their own literature, poetry, theatre, operas, novels, cheap TV, good TV, jokes, comic books (actually, Belgians are the world masters of comics, but does anyone here know that?), all kinds of music, festivals about any of these, they have local radio, they have public radio which doesn't spend four weeks a year panhandling, there are even things unimaginable here - seeing a whole rock concert on TV, seeing a whole theatrical premiere live (no ads!), whole series of interviews with interesting ordinary people, seeing movies in other languages on public TV... and if anyone expects these things to happen anywhere because there'd be a demand for them - how can anyone have a demand for things nobody ever saw? Except that one percent or less?

Example: Pippi Longstocking. How many here remember which country was it from? How many have seen any other version of it but the American (feature or cartoon)? How many other versions were there?

Or, put these guys into their arts: Raymond Macherot, Andrzej Wajda, Zbigniew Cibulsky, Holger Czukay, Magnus & Bunker, György Lukács, Danilo Kiš, Agnieszka Holland, Lucio Battisti, Mikis Theodorakis.