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Mar. 26th, 2009
odd treatment of UK TV in the US
Mar. 26th, 2009 11:41 amItem 1: In the last episode of "Ashes to Ashes" I watched, there were subtitles. But only for one character (Gene Hunt) and only for some of his lines. It seemed...odd.
Item 2: In touting their latest release, Acorn Media (which sells a lot of UK television content on DVD in the United States) promotes "Taggart" as "the world’s longest continually-running police drama". Which I imagine may well be true; it's running since 1983. But Volume One of their offering? It's the 2002/2003 season. Bwuh?
Item 3: In the same vein, "The Bill", which has been around just as long and run through 25 series, is available now in the US. But only Series 1. ????
(Now, admittedly, even in the UK, only Series 1-4 of "The Bill" have been released on DVD. In Australia, oddly enough, Series 1-6 and one of the spin-off series are available.)
Discuss.
(crossposted to brits_americans)
Item 2: In touting their latest release, Acorn Media (which sells a lot of UK television content on DVD in the United States) promotes "Taggart" as "the world’s longest continually-running police drama". Which I imagine may well be true; it's running since 1983. But Volume One of their offering? It's the 2002/2003 season. Bwuh?
Item 3: In the same vein, "The Bill", which has been around just as long and run through 25 series, is available now in the US. But only Series 1. ????
(Now, admittedly, even in the UK, only Series 1-4 of "The Bill" have been released on DVD. In Australia, oddly enough, Series 1-6 and one of the spin-off series are available.)
Discuss.
(crossposted to brits_americans)
(no subject)
Mar. 26th, 2009 02:13 pmInstead of spamming my friend's separate entry on housing, here's what I found when I went looking for comparative stats about US v. UK rental patterns.
Per the UK Department of Communities and Local Government: Seventy per cent of households are owner occupiers, 18 per cent are social tenants and 13 per cent are private renters.
Per the HUD/DOC American Housing Survey for 2007, of the 110 million year-round, occupied housing units, 75 million (68 percent) are occupied by owners while 35 million (32 percent) are occupied by renters. They don't explicitly break out social housing the way the UK does in an executive summary, but as near as I can tell from the supporting tables, only about 1 million of those rental units (or less than 1 percent of all year-round, occupied housing units) are owned by a government housing authority or paid for by government subsidy (Section 8 housing vouchers and the like).
So, despite what I've been told in the past, the percentage of people renting in the US v. the UK is about the same. It's just that in the US, there is very little public housing, whereas in the UK it accounts for more than half of rental housing (and that's after 20 years of the government trying to sell off council houses to their occupants...) To me that speaks volumes about which country looks after its citizens better...
Per the UK Department of Communities and Local Government: Seventy per cent of households are owner occupiers, 18 per cent are social tenants and 13 per cent are private renters.
Per the HUD/DOC American Housing Survey for 2007, of the 110 million year-round, occupied housing units, 75 million (68 percent) are occupied by owners while 35 million (32 percent) are occupied by renters. They don't explicitly break out social housing the way the UK does in an executive summary, but as near as I can tell from the supporting tables, only about 1 million of those rental units (or less than 1 percent of all year-round, occupied housing units) are owned by a government housing authority or paid for by government subsidy (Section 8 housing vouchers and the like).
So, despite what I've been told in the past, the percentage of people renting in the US v. the UK is about the same. It's just that in the US, there is very little public housing, whereas in the UK it accounts for more than half of rental housing (and that's after 20 years of the government trying to sell off council houses to their occupants...) To me that speaks volumes about which country looks after its citizens better...
