I think the level of creativity amongst commercial tv execs is poor (and that being nice!).
The problem is this word - commerical. Commercial TV exists to sell products. More and more the 'sponsors' of programs are wanting to pay less and less to advertise. Down comes the price of advertising, followed by the budgets for programming, followed by cheap American import TV.
One episode of (cheapish) Australian drama can cost over $60,000 to produce. Then we watch it for half an hour, and forget it. A four part Australian documentary is around $350,000.
Reality and lifestyle programs can come in at around $15 to 20,000 per episode. Even that is a lot of Sorbent, or Mikes wonderful window washers commercials, which are restricted to a certain number per hour.
I'm not sure of the details - I know there is someone on this list from Screenwest so they would probably know for sure, but I think you can buy a US sitcom episode for less than $2000. Now sell the same amount of Sorbent ads and you are suddenly making a profit.
It sucks, and its about to get worse now that the gov has given the US a bigger slice of our media custard tart. Its not about creativity. :)
