Contact: Alien POV and television

Ok, so I'm working on a "first contact" story, but from the aliens' point of view. Like in Carl Sagan's book, the alien race first becomes aware of humanity's existence from radio and later television signals from Earth.

For the purpose of the question, let's assume the following:
1) The aliens are not massively ahead of humanity, technology-wise. Launching a probe to a local (<10 light years) on a long (~hundred year) mission is not out of the question, but warp drives, wormholes, and all that are out.
2) The alien world is relatively Earthlike. Carbon and water-based life, "Goldilocks zone" temperatures. They may be intelligent octopuses, not sure yet, but nothing in their lived enviroment is going to be unreconcilably different from ours (they aren't telepathic gas clouds that live just outside the Schwartzchild radius of a black hole).
3) They have technology and know-how sufficient to receive and interpret radio and television signals accurately. This does not include understanding the language or culture behind them at first, but they can put "I Love Lucy" up on their equivalent of a flatscreen, and a human sitting in the audience would be able to identify the pictures (somewhat degraded) and understand the audio (also degraded).

So, what do aliens notice about TV first? One thing that occurred to me is that they wouldn't initially know the difference between a Coca-Cola commercial and a Holocaust documentary, but they would probably notice that there are a series of short, repetitive scenes that come on repeatedly, and that the format of the short shows tends to be simpler and feature certain images more prominently than in the longer form work. Also, different languages might be distinguishable (remember, they're getting all the TV without reference to where it's coming from).

Any other thoughts? I know where the story is going, but the initial parts are giving me some headaches.

Thanks for looking.

 

If they're of a similar intelligence to us I'd wager they'd struggle sorting the wheat from the chaff.

All frames of reference would be their own and they'd be picking through one serious info dump of our radio waves. Across that spectrum too only the tiniest endeavour (by ourselves) to actually point a meaningful message in their direction. I'm not even sure we're transmitting any deliberate 'we're here' message at all (are we?). What goes out is just our entertainment chatter; fake people (mostly), beholden to fake narratives. Was it Galaxy Quest where the aliens thought a Star Trek style Sci-fi and Gilligan's Island were real?

Then there's the added gamut of the human condition, that we attempt to portray through television, and how it manifests in different cultures. There's comedy, thrillers, drama, the portrayal of love, the arts...

It takes a human years to get a grip on life; 20 years plus to gain wisdom and maturity. Yeah, it'd take some serious scientific effort on their part too I reckon + time to get a handle on us.

And conclude were bonkers!

 

Or think they've been rumbled and bog off.

 

Yup. That.

 

@Homer Potvin Huh, well. That happened.