LETTERS: American holiday on British televison

From Mr Jeremy Walker Sir: Unable to find anything worth watching on television over the holiday and stimulated by the recent correspondence about statistics, I thought I might produce some myself. On BBC1, BBC2, ITV and Channel 4 over the seven days from 25 to 31 December, American films or programmes about America or Americans accounted for no less than 46 per cent, 62 per cent, 70 per cent and 40 per cent respectively of the total number of hours broadcast between 9pm and 2am.

Should more evidence be needed that our screens are dominated to an absurd extent by transatlantic culture and values, I further calculated that programmes from or about the whole of the rest of the world amounted to 3 per cent, 2 per cent, 0 per cent and 13 per cent (apart from the news, that is), Channel 4 managing to escape from shameful parochiality with its theme of a Black Christmas and some late-night Chinese films.

British television the best in the world? Probably, with the exception of the US, the narrowest.

Yours faithfully, JEREMY WALKER London, SW17

30 December