When is a series a series?

 When is a series a series?   Well it's not if it's made in America!
 For some reason the US can't grasp the meaning of the word series, indeed they call their television series a season. This is because unlike most other countries that show a series in order weekly, the Americans show their "series" of say 10 programs randomly over the year, inter spaced by dozens or even hundreds of repeats. This makes it more or less impossible to actually follow a series properly.  Ok not all of the channels do thisbut most seem to.
 Just to make life harder again some like animal planet and discovery have a habit of having a web pages saying NEW EPISODE of blah blah blah starting sunday!!!!....  Except it doesn't say which sunday or what year even, or which episode, so you have no idea if you've seen it, or if it's coming at some point in the future... 2057 perhaps?  How bloody hard is it to put the full date, come on guys it's not difficult really.
 It's no wonder viewing figures are going down for some of these series, no bugger can watch them as we never know when they are on.