Date Schemes

I keep seeing dates, especially on TV (which may be all that is needed to be known), in the form [9/8/16]. I then have to wonder what idiot created the ad, and what idiot directed creation of the ad such that it uses such a date scheme. 

First off, we're only 16 years since (the dreaded) Y2K. Why are we not all using 4 digit years? Did some really stupid people just not learn anything?  Yes, our species has a history of refusing to learn from mistakes... but I refuse to accept that. (So, maybe I'm refusing to learn that others are just too stupid to learn...)  Using only a 2 digit year, regardless of order is inexcusable.  Without 4 digits, there's no way of knowing 2016 from 1916 or 1816 or 0016. 
Then, there's the day/month order.  If your date is going to be meaningful AT ALL, then there should be some order of magnitude.  Europeans (and a fair bit of the rest of the planet, I'd wager) write dates in the form [8 September 2016] (long form) or [8/9/2016] (short form).  Many that use computers, or other devices that tend to automagically sort most things alphabetically, tend to use the [2016/09/08] notation (year/month/day) or [2016-09-08] (because the "/" is a "special character" that functions poorly in filenames), and this is for the obvious reason of having things (quite logically) kept in a chronological order, instead of having all the September items for several years or decades together, then all the October items... etc., or worse, everything that happened on a 8th of some month of some year, then 9th of some month of some year... etc.

Maybe it's just a problem with American broadcasters and/or advertisers. 
1.) It could be that the broadcasters/advertisers are idiots.  No fix for that except to stop watching.
2.) It could be that the broadcasters/advertisers are targeting idiots.  But, in that case, don't you think they'd try to improve their audience instead of dumbing things down?
3.) It could be that American broadcasters/advertisers are just stuck in the same stupid mud that has kept the US on the imperial system which (hint, hint) the British (Empire) has abandoned in favor of the metric system, so continuing to use an out-dated, crappy date scheme just seems natural to them.  In which case, the broadcaster/advertiser is an idiot and refer back to point 1.

Maybe I just don't get it.  Hopefully I never will.  I'm OK with that.  At some point I don't want to see a date in the form [9/8/16] and understand it without having to translate it into something useful.  I want to sneer at whoever forced me to translate it and know that my thought process hasn't been catastrophically damaged by the retards (literal meaning, "delayed in growth") that continue to use it.