I went to a TV writing seminar a couple of weeks ago, and the former network executive-turned-producer running it told us that ad minutes have been steadily climbing. A 1/2-hour sitcom, for example, used to be 26 minutes long minus commercials. Now it’s 17. An hour drama went from 54 to 45 minutes. That’s 15 MINUTES of commercials per hour. It’s not just SciFi. It’s every channel that carries commercials. That’s also why there are credit crawls now while the program is still on instead of them demarcating the end of the show. Cable used to not have commercials at all, except for their own programming! And PBS, too! They used to have “This program is made possible by [Corporate Entity], [Foundation], The Corporation for Public Broadcasting and Viewers Like You.” Now, the Corporate Entity has a 30-second commercial by itself before and after.
It’s getting repugnant. I realize TV was an ad-driven medium from the start, but damn. Enough already.