Our Yanks-driven viewing shame

There's an awful ruckus next door while I'm trying to write this.

A woolly little red puppet with a squeaky voice called Elmo, I think, is looking for his lost blanket in a place called Grouchyland, where all the creatures are grumpy - and some of them want to eat him. There is a character with a New York accent who says a lot at top volume. Judging from the music and sound effects blasting through the wall between our TV room and my study, Elmo is being chased by the grouchy, hungry puppets.

It's Sunday afternoon and the kids are watching their 50th TV programme of the day. I know it's bad parenting; we should be sitting together as a happy family to unpack the mysteries of the Higgs boson thingamabob or pondering Hegel and historical materialism. But it's Sunday and I'm feeling too lazy for anything intellectual, which is why I'm writing this column.

Instead of watching endless hours of American-accented woolly puppets, I often try to get my kids to watch something a bit educational, like the courting rituals of giant Amazonian chameleons on National Geographic. My son has cottoned on to this as a way to keep watching telly almost ad infinitum.

He is nine years old and, as parents will know, nine-year-olds are the smartest people on the planet. In fact, I think we should have a few nine-year-olds in our cabinet.

Usually when my son switches to the "educational" channels and I check up on him, I find he is watching programmes about American rednecks buying abandoned storage units full of junk or serious bumpkins who shoot alligators for a living in the Louisiana swamps.

I don't have much of a principled aversion to the fact that 90% of our television is American - with a bit of BBC in the mix - but I can't understand why there is so little local stuff. I am led to believe millions of people watch locally produced soap operas during the week, but I also know there are millions of South Africans who don't watch that kind of stuff, myself included.

It has been reported that the good people at Deloitte have released a study on our film and video industry and found that, despite it getting almost no support from our public coffers, movie- and TV-making have been flying. The ponytails contribute that to the economy.

Like my laaitie, I love documentaries, and sometimes the two of us end up watching a show about guys in a white van who go poking around people's barns.

Multichoice sends out trillions of hours of programming a week, but why is most of it not South African?

Almost every piece of clothing and footwear we buy has been made in China. The other day I bought a box of tissues that had been made in Oman of all places.

We South Africans might no longer be good at making things, but we have talented people who are capable of making good movies and television. But if our local creative types can't compete against American stuff, you have to wonder why we're outsourcing our entertainment. Where are the local content quotas, you have to ask yourself?