Commercial breaks are up to 6 minutes on some programs and add up to about 21 minutes per hour of programming.
I keep the laptop handy.
One can do a significant amount of web surf during that time.
I just watch tv shows on the internet - those 60 minute long shows are shaved down to 42.
When some talk show hosts say they offer three hours of talk, what they really should say is about half that. Hannity and many of the other big names only jabber for about thirty minutes or so per hour. The rest of the time is about ten minutes of news and twenty minutes of what seems neverending ads. Rush used to be the best offering about forty minutes of actual talk per hour, but now much of that time he's pitching Carbonite or something else and he's down to about thirtyfive minutes of actual issues talk. Whatever their strategy, when the ads come on, I either switch to another station or simply turn the radio off.