Europe's TV diet still resolutely national

Europe's couch potatoes are being offered an increasing diet of EU-made television, yet TV culture remains a strictly national matter, the European Union executive said Wednesday. In an annual report, the EU executive said most of the bloc's 27 states were complying with rules to offer at least 50 percent EU-made production, with almost 65 percent of shows of EU origin, according to statistics for 2009-2010. Exceptions were Britain, Ireland and Slovenia, the European Commission said. "However the majority of these European works are domestic works," it said in a statement, with only 8.1 percent of programmes on average made across a country's border.