I remember when television used to be "free" but we had to sit through all those 30 second commercials. That was sort of the price you paid for getting "free" content.
Now the average person (not me) pays over $100/mo for cable TV - much of which still has commercials anyhow.
The best part about those commercials we get to pay for? There are more of them than ever before! It used to be around ten minutes per hour, but now it seems to be closer to ten minutes per HALF hour. There is even a show called “22 minutes”, the title referring to the amount of actual programming per half hour.