Commercials

I assume I know what television executives are thinking. We get so much for a commercial. So the more

commercials we show, the more money we'll make. I bet most people are smarter than them. I think its pretty clear that there is a point of diminishing returns. People will just stop watching TV when it gets to be too much. I don't remember when I heard this, but somewhere I learned that there used to be about four minutes of commercials for a half-hour show. I saw that we're now up to eight minutes for a half-hour show. I think its worse than that, though. I saw a Big Bang Theory episode on DVD. There you can see the full time of the show. It was 19 minutes and some seconds. So, 19 minutes of show and 11 minutes of commercials. There are a lot of times I'll channel surf and find something and watch it until a commercial comes up, then I leave or switch to a different show. 

I can't be the only one that does that. Or better yet, use a DVR. Most anything I watch, I make sure I can fast forward through the commercials. They companies paying for the ad time probably look at the ratings for the show and are content with that. Pretty misleading, I think. 

I don't have proof of this, but I think the streaming services are trying to sneak in more commercials now. To avoid that, you have to buy or rent the movie. So they make money from your subscription, but more, either from the advertisers or the extra you pay to rent it. There isn't a lot of that yet, but I think its coming.

I feel like I'm just scratching the surface, so I'll probably continue my rant next week.