[acdcguy]

I'll also add that it depends on the demographics and the genre as well. A lot of it is based on what sells. Tokusatsu, anime, and game shows are big in Japan. The USA has crime dramas, sitcoms, and for a while reality TV was big. So even fads come into play.

I will defend some sub par animes over most bad American TV shows though because more work and imagination are put into anime than most American shows. FairyTail gets a lot of hate for not being completely original and the use of a lot of cliche anime tropes. Yet the visuals are good and the characters are typically likable. While Americans seem to be enthralled by the copy and paste crime dramas with wooden actors that plague American TV networks. How many CSI shows do we need? The only exception would be Lucifer. Though the show is another CSI copy it at least has better acting, a likable protagonist, and a supernatural theme that makes it slightly entertaining, but not necessarily unique.

Quantity comes into play too. There's probably a lot more American throw away TV dramas, sitcoms, and reality shows past and present than there are Japanese programs. TV shows aren't all produced in Hollywood. Some stations were even localized before the time of satellite TV and the internet. That caused a lot of shows to be made for a local audience, usually by district or state. Japan is only an island nation with limited simply and demand. The USA is an Oligarchical Empire made up of several dozen semi-sovereign nations. Being so small with a smaller population means content output is more about quality and less about quantity.