First off, let me state that I was a Television Broadcast engineer for 20 years starting back in the late 70's. I've been out of it for quite awhile, but man how things have changed. Anyway, back then a LONG commercial break was 2 minutes and there was generally at start-break, a mid-break, and an end-break (which was shared with the start break for the following program). A special note here, in that most of these were network breaks and our station only made direct income on the local breaks we ran and still turned a reasonable profit. We actually had to pay the network to carry their programming including all their breaks and ads!

Anyway, to get to the point, today's breaks are far more frequent and much, much longer. So much so that I think it's getting absurd! Last night, my wife and I watched an approx. 2 hour movie that took 3-1/2 hours to air and I counted and average of 8 commercials, two promos, and/or PSA's in each break. Some had even more (especially promos), but not one break was less than 5 minutes and a couple were a full 8 minutes long! I wish I had also counted the actual number of breaks, but I was having trouble keeping up with the movie already. Top that off by the fact that most of us pay to have this programming brought into our homes with cable, satellite, and/or streaming fees and subscriptions and I simply have to wonder how many jillions of dollars these channels are making on all these ads and double dipping on their subscriptions and/or fees as well.

While I realize that money is the driving factor here and we will never get around the corporate greed for more and more income, I think it's high time we began to rebel against this situation or at least put the powers that be on notice that we are fed up with this situation. I'm not sure what we can effectively do about this, but I'm certainly open to your suggestions and I will be writing my cable company and local stations about this, as well as posting this topic in multiple venues to see if there is any real response from the public in general. I am also considering going back to "Off Air" TV only. While they still run too many ads, at least they don't double dip by also charging me for their overall programming. Anyway, I'd love to start a reasonable discussion on this subject and would appreciate your input. I'd really like to start some grass roots support and give them as much negative feedback as possible. Thanks for reading this far and please "Enjoy the Season and Celebrate the Reason!"

Wrong.. Having gone to a number of collage football games the time outs etc. are controlled by the networks. A so called 30 second time out at the game is more like 3 or 4 minutes. A game that should take about an hour and a half counting half time takes closer to 3 and a half by the time the TV time outs are added. If you notice there is often at least 4 or 5 commercials when the ball changes hands, following a score, touchdown, field goal or whatever there are even more. I have been recording live games and then going back and watching them later fast forwarding through the commercials. If I start watching between and hour and an hour and a half into the game I get to watch the last quarter or more of the game live so it's not spoiled by knowing the outcome.