Ask Lemmy

Television and Radio are 75% advertisement.

This won't help you, but this comment leads me to believe you're in the US, where everything you talk about is almost certainly significantly worse than pretty much any other country. Because the US is essentially lawless when it comes to advertising.

Here in the UK, we have the BBC, which only runs promos for its own content, and only ever between programmes. The BBC isn't perfect by any means. It feels to me like its management has become steadily worse over the past 10/15 years, as the board of directors was filled with Conservative appointees. And the news department really ought to be made to answer for consistently encouraging the worst voices on air.

But in the end, that £175 a year for the licence fee acts as a bulwark from the worst excesses of commercial broadcasting. ITV, for example, is lousy for advertising, but is kept reasonably in check by the BBC because comparison is easy. If they allowed themselves to become too much like the US model, people would be rightly irritated when they switch over from watching something on BBC1.

The same is true of BBC vs. commercial radio. The BBC keeps the other broadcasters reasonably honest, and they don't necessarily have to turn a profit.

So in answer to your original point; the problem is - as ever - capitalism. The perpetual need for maximising shareholder profit means that the US entertainment industry aims 90% of its output at the lowest common denominator, and it'll only get worse while that's the predominant driver.