Here are a few things that might help put things in perspective. The UK has a population of around 60 million. The US has a population of around 300 million. So right away, you would expect 5 times as many instances of cruelty in the US as in the UK.

Secondly, for the same reasons, you know that any TV show has 5 times as many potential viewers in the US as in the UK, so anybody who wants to produce a TV show like that has the expectation of 5 times the advertising revenue, and so would probably have a production budget 5 times greater.

So you have 5 times as many instances of cruelty, plus people trying 5 times harder to videotape them. What does that translate to? 25 times as many instances being taped? OK, the math isn't exact, but you get the idea.

I am told that the producers of these shows have picked a couple of cities that have full-time animal protection officers, and they have their film crews follow these officers all the time. On every single call that the officers make, they have a film crew following them. I'd guess that means each film crew (and I don't know how many crews they have) shoots about 40 hours of video tape for each half-hour show they produce. Naturally, they pick the most dramatic cases, which probably means the worst instances of cruelty.

I'm sure the companies that produce these shows would love to do similar shows about cruelty to children, but the legal obstacles are too great. There are laws to protect the privacy of humans, but animals have no rights to privacy.