I live in Belgium which is totally cabled and we get 40+ channels. Almost all are much worse than BBC1 and BBC2 except that a couple of the Dutch and Flemish stations have fairly recent and good films quite often. One of the Flemish channels, however, has a variant of Big Brother called "The Bus" where the annoying occupants of the live-in bus regularly get thrown off (I'm not sure whether it is moving at the time!).

Having said that, on any given day, even BBC1 and BBC2 have about threequarters rubbish and they have definitely been "dumbed down" over the past few years. Some evenings, by switching, you can get a whole evening of "changing rooms" or "changing gardens" programmes and even one teams presenters doing the other team's show sometimes. That is, if you want to (which I don't!). The limit for me was when they did a makeover on a warship a couple of years ago. The fashion now seems to be programmes about joyriders and the police who chase them and programmes about the less interesting workings of airports. Ene the hoispital programmes seem to have become glorified bonkoriums.

Having sais that, I tend to agree with John Humphries that the few good programmes that there are are even better these days.

So, in more words, I largely agree with Sir jOhn. Too much rubbish and not enough of the good stuff.

Still, it has an upside. Since I hardly watch the telly these days, I play a lot more and have widened my repertoire a lot!

Peace

moo