[RipSawyer]

That is what has stopped me from watching live TV. I watch things like The Vikings or Justified but only recorded so I can fast forward all the commercial crap. Back in the fifties when advertising revenue paid for everything there was talk of “Pay TV” in the future but no one expected that when you paid a monthly fee to watch you would have two or three times as many minutes of advertising per hour as there used to be. Some of the old shows that were one hour including commercials are no rerun as one hour and fifteen minute shows. They have added fifteen more minutes of ads and sometimes I think they have also edited out part of the show. In some cases there is nearly as much advertising as program.

[Mad Dawgg]

The last month we had cable my daughter had a friend over. I was working on a project in the living room and she asked if she could watch a Harry Potter film that was showing on one of the cable channels (USA, TNT, Hallmark one of those.) I said fine because I wasn't watching anything.

So she started watching and I was deep in my project and about two hours went by and I noticed the program was only half done. I asked her if this was some new extended edition of the Goblet of Fire because it started two hours ago and was only half done. (we checked the start and finish time on the channel menu) I checked the internet to see if it was a new version but I found no mention of it in the programming or on the cable channel website.

So I started watching it a little to see if I could catch a new scene or something that would tell me it was a new version.

Then I noticed that the program would run about 5 or 6 minutes then they would have 4 or 5 minutes of commercials. And they kept doing it and doing it and doing it.

The show was a little less than 2.5 hours long BUT it took four hours to show it.

I was astonished. And not long after that I cut the cable off. Because I was done with the constant blather of useless commercials for crap I had no interest in. We audited our viewing habits and did some checking and about the only thing we could not get on the internet that we watched regularly on cable TV was Live NFL football and Live Cable News. We go to Dad's house to watch football with him (it has become a family day with a meal and snacks and beer etc.) and cable news we sacrificed. Now we get much more done and don't miss cable news at all.

Also we found so many more interesting shows on the internet. Tons of Documentaries that we would never have seen on Cable. AND NO COMMERCIALS!!!!!