What the Americans do particularly well, though, is how they show it's live. On somewhere like ABC World News, they have a small 'Live ET' at the top of the aston, which fades in and out with it. Nothing big and obscuring (usually), on screen for the duration. But then it's less of a deal for the US broadcasters as they usually have far more lives as standard in bulletins than we do. And NBC's TODAY programme kept a 'LIVE' bug during Al Roker's weather forecast, which obscured the statue of Marilyn he was talking about (they only had the one shot), leaving him to actually reference the bug. But even then, that sort of thing seems rarer than here.
Definitely agree the live bugs are annoying, especially when anchoring on location. The Royal Wedding was a good example for the BBC - clearly outside Buckingham Palace, but they felt that needed to be mentioned on screen, even though it wasn't necessary outside the news bulletins that day. I think I said at the time just as certain people won't have astons (the Primeminister, the Queen, the President etc.) I think for certain locations (No. 10, Buckingham Palace, the Whitehouse) they're unnecessary too.
And also much better they just fade them out with the aston rather than keep them on throughout. That could get us on to a whole other topic though, especially with 24 hour news where the lower thirds are now virtually permanently filled.