French and Belgian TV

I have spent the last few days in Paris walking around and taking in all the culture. I have spent far too much time at coffeeshops eating crepes and drinking “cafes.” Today we went to go see the Musée des arts Décoratifs. I went with Tracey and Henry N. Jackson (a friend of Tracey’s, and now mine). It was an experience seeing it with two phenomenal craftsmen/artists.

On a side note, the picture below is one of Henry’s haute-couture gowns. So if you are looking for a high-end gown or wedding dress, you should contact him in Paris.

I have a lot of blog entries in my mind on a range of topics, so I think I will try to catch up over the next month. Most of them are on mundane subjects that are interesting to me, so keep reading!

After spending the last two weeks here in Europe, I have noticed some things about French and Belgium TV. First off, Tracey wants me to write that there are lots of boobies. We spent a half hour watching the French version of the Naked News.

Also, the advertising here isn’t as frequent as the commercials on American TV. It seems like the commercials are run every half hour, but last a little bit longer than what we’re used to on our broadcast channels. I wonder which one brings in a higher return for the channels. It seems as if there is less total advertising time in France or Belgium. Tracey thinks there are less car/product ads and there are more publicity ads than the US.

Lastly, I finally got to watch a half hour of Al-Jazeera (English). The depth of the coverage and the video that accompanies it seems a lot more effective than CNN. Atleast, that is the impression I got after a half hour of watching. It may be the un-PC thing to say, but if I had a choice of watching CNN or watching Al-Jazeera, I’d pick the latter. Tracey said it best – on the day they had the mideast peace talks, CNN covered Anna Nicole Smith’s death and aired Larry King’s show on American Idol auditions.