There's ALWAYS a commercial break on.

[Jeebo]

When I'm flipping through the channels, whichever channel where I want to see what's on there, and I flip over there, there's ALWAYS a commercial break there. I don't mean usually, I don't mean almost always, I mean ALWAYS. I mean ONE HUNDRED PERCENT of the time. How do they do that? Do they have some kind of algorithm that makes that happen because they want everybody to have to sit through commercials before finding out what's on?

I guess y'all can tell how I'm spending lots of my Covid isolation time.

-- Ron

[Marie Marie]

1. I feel your pain. Maybe it's because the commercial breaks are getting longer and

the shows are getting shorter.

[TexLaProgressive]

4. Growing up in the 1950s commercials

Were 1 minute at the hour and half hour 30 seconds at the quarter hours for a total of 3 minutes per hour.

[dweller]

2. Paid programming

seems to be on all channels also
$$

✌🏻

[Beartracks]

3. TV is an ad delivery service punctuated by occasional show breaks to keep you watching.

==========

[Ka-Dinh Oy]

5. I will tell you what your problem is.

When you change to different channels you hope there will be no commercials. What you need to do is hope for there to be commercials.

It always seems that when we hope for something we get the opposite. Just a suggestion.

[Marie Marie]

6. "It always seems that when we hope for something we get the opposite"

You too?? I thought it was just me and my rotten luck.

[Ka-Dinh Oy]

7. Nope, you are not alone.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

8. I noticed that some years ago.

I don't own a TV, haven't (this most current go-around) since 2008. I do watch a reasonable amount of television via the internet. The very best thing is no commercials. Really. It's especially wonderful during an election year.

This is the fourth time in my adulthood that I've been without TV, and it came about when I moved to my current location in Santa Fe. When I moved here, I didn't have the money to purchase a TV set. Nor was I willing to pay for some kind of cable provider, which I knew would be needed. But, oddly enough, the deciding factor was that in the apartment I rented here in New Mexico, which has wonderful strong light, the cable hookup was just below the living room window, which would have meant that watching TV would have necessitated closing the blinds of that window and rendering that room dark in the daytime. Really? Nope.

I also quickly learned that various networks and tv stations go to live streaming for things I want to see. I also currently have Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix, and I'm okay that I'm somewhat behind on watching current shows.

[cyclonefence]

9. Ronald Reagan did this to us no kidding

Among the other things he did to wreck American TV, Reagan either took the time limit off (as in minutes/hour) that stations could sell for commercials, or greatly increased it.

http://library.cqpress.com/cqresearcher/document.php?id=cqresrre1987120400

[ms liberty]

10. Usually, people channel hop during a commercial on the channel they're watching

At least that is my observation in my own household, lol. But all the channels show commercials at about the same times, so when you're channel hopping during a commercial, everyone else is, too.

[Wounded Bear]

11. This...nt

[hunter]

12. What's a television channel?

The television in our house plays DVDs and Netflix.

Occasionally we stream other content to it from our laptops and phones. That's how we watched the Democratic Convention, the Presidential Inauguration, Perseverance Mars Landing, etc..

My wife and I quit traditional television a long time ago.

No cable, no satellite, no broadcast.

And best of all, no commercials!

I think traditional television is fading away. None of my adult children, nephews, or nieces pay any attention to it. They stream everything.

[CloudWatcher]

13. TiVo!

We've had some kind of DVR for years, and record everything we watch so we can skip the commercials. Don't care about sports, really don't watch anything live.

The only downside is total cluelessness when people start ranting about particularly bad commercials. My doctor started to complain about one to me and I was thinking it'd been years since I watched a commercial!