Meanwhile, across the pond...

Vive l'original et unique en son genre de dichotomie français raisonnement!
Il est un mystère, une perplexité illogique. N'est-ce pas? Grenouilles vouloir ce que le britannique chic beeb's

Who knew: you had to have a licence to DirecTV?

I never fail to record and watch BBC America's:
That Mitchell and Webb Look
Coupling
Some episodes of:
Wire In The Blood
Torchwood
Robin Hood

But of course French or Latin channels would be Greek to me. I'm glad that the French protect themselves from that sort of insult.

In the end, we pay for content many times and many ways.

Tax

Thank god I don't live in France, never the less we get taxed to death on everything else in the UK, please don't give Gordan any ideas, his tiny brain will go into over drive.

Entertainment

It's all well and nice for my President (yes, I live in France) to want to encourage local production, and I'm sure there are many small producers who will only be too happy to oblige.
Unfortunately, while I am not particularly enthused over the wash of USA-made drivel that inundates my TV schedule all week, I must say that, if I have to chose between that and French-made drivel, I might as well chose the USA-made stuff.
At least, with USA-made drivel, I get to see explosions and gunfights every now and then, even if the realism is not always up to snuff.
Whereas, with French-made drivel, all I'm going to see is endless variations of the man-wife-mistress paradigm that seems to obsess French filmwriters since the dawn of history.