How do people watch TV in the US with all these commercial breaks?

TBH, I haven't watched live tv in ages. So, I guess as a rep of the American populace, a lot of us just don't watch tv anymore.

I don't, for the most part. Ad-free Hulu (I don't watch the few shows that still have ads) is a blessing.

@ripelivejam: I'm glad I have people reminding me with threads started like this. Keeps me in check.

I rarely do. I cut cable like 2 years ago and mostly stream. Sports and movie theaters being the only time I see commercials

I put money down to the BBC on the off-chance there's six hours of television I want to watch. Plus, even though I know the TV Licensing hi-tech vans are a fallacy, I would rather pay the telly tax.

It's messed up, for sure. As others have said, we aren't exactly the target market for traditional tv outside sporting events. Most all of us have moved on to On Demand.

I haven't watched TV in years besides maybe a few episodes of Walking Dead. I just watch stuff on-demand or wait until it ends up on Netflix or Amazon.

Other than Sports, I don't watch tv. I used to just change the channel when they came on. Works great with sports as there is usually more than one game on at once and due to the unpredictable nature of play, they can't sync up their ad breaks.

Ads are more entertaining than they used to be though.

I haven't paid for cable since 2009, and have persuaded my parents to dump cable as of last year. I don't watch much television anyway, but even if I did there are so many avenues of receiving much of the same content without all of the goddamn ads. The worst part of the WWE Network, a paid subscription-based service, is that it serves you what I feel is a shit ton of ads and charges for the privilege.

I usually don't watch TV the normal way. I'll watch TV on the internet with adblock, but most places have a work around for that now. I really like watching soccer (football) games since both halves are commercial free with maybe a little pop-out thing on the score board (and the adverts around the pitch). Also I wait for shit to get on Netflix or Amazon Prime to get a true commercial free experience.

I haven't watched TV in ten years. I download shows, watch Netflix, buy Blu-ray boxsets and rent discs. Cable TV is expensive and not personal enough.

I literally haven't watched TV in America for 6 years, I couldn't do it anymore the internet ruined me its awful, the only way anyone in my house watches TV (Still not me I have zero interest in TV) is by recording it or pausing the TV for at least 30+ minutes so you can skip the Immense amount of garbage they shove down your throat, and they wonder why TV is dying.

Try watching an NBA game in the 4th Quarter

Watch TV? With a PVR so you can skip all the ads. Or you use a streaming box and only watch on-demand stuff. Watching live TV is the worst, never do it.

Most people don't notice the commercials, or are using a DVR to fast forward past them. Another good amount of people stream the shows they want. Also if you grew up in America with commercials on the tv, then you learn to ignore them. Honestly it's not really a problem now.

I tried watching some US sports and its just insane how many breaks in play and ads play.

I think most of us American's that still watch live tv and who aren't grampas only watch it for sports. I only watch live tv when I'm at my parents house and it's nauseating. There are just so many better options out there.

It's a real pain in the ass when you go watch the games live and there are "media timeouts." I went to college football games occasionally and those were the worst breaks in the action.

Dvr and netflix basically.

I rarely ever watch tv, but when I do, I watch it recorded on my DVR and skip the commericals.

I'll speak for how my family (who didn't have cable tv or internet until 2004) watched tv for my entire childhood, (and just past graduating high-school)....we just did.

Take one of the many popular family comedies that were popular in the early-mid 90s (Family Matters, Fresh Prince, Full House, Home Improvement, yada) All of those were 30 minute time-blocks, with about 22.5 minutes of show, and 7 minutes of commercial. The time was split into 3 commercial breaks, with a the first block of the show often a minute longer then the last.

That is just how it was. It wasn't a matter of "Well why don't you dvr it, why don't you pause it, why don't you stream it". Outside of recording content onto a VCR you either watched it live, or missed it. And recording with a VCR was a major event. You could certainly do it for special events, but the concept of recording 10-16 hours of content a week to watch at your convenience...like you could but I know of absolutely no one who did.

These days, the people who still watch live tv tend to be older and used to how things used to work. The idea that everything should be digital, streaming, on demand. Everyone uses ad-block and etc are Millennial generation ideas. Not wrong, Just not how your parents did it.

That said, personally, I've found the 'no commercials ever' to have its downsides. Commercial breaks were when you got up and refilled water, when you came in the room to talk before the show came back on, when you got to switch over and watch a few minutes of the wrestling/sports show you wouldn't otherwise get to see any of. See? I'm nostalgic for it even though I know its an inferior way of doing things.

Oh and the reason people don't just switch today is more or less human nature. Imagine tomorrow if the streaming stuff became old and the way it used to be was the it thing. If everyone started doing it, if it was cheaper and proven to be better and all that jazz. How easy would you find it to drop what your currently used too completely and go to something utterly different? A bit of suspension of disbelief needed to get the metaphor but there you go. That's why people still use the old system, human beings like order, not change.

dvr, fast forward commercials

I did not know that anybody watched TV anymore. Very novel.

I've always found it interesting how American football is basically a sport designed around commercial breaks.

But yes, TV and pretty much all aspects of life in the USA seem to be wrought with advertising. That being said, on the rare occasion I turn on one of the ad-supported TV channels here in Finland I'm always surprised by the amount of ads they stuff into the breaks.

I studied advertising a couple of years ago. So few people in my age bracket watch TV that the teachers had to bring advertisements they'd recorded off of TV into class to facilitate discussions around the subject.

Try watching wrestling with All these add breaks.....

While I don't currently have cable/satellite I kinda want it back. My internet throws fits from time to time and it sucks not being able to watch anything when it does. Also sucks that CW shows aren't on Hulu, so I can't easily keep up with them.

That said, I wouldn't watch anything live. Just DVR everything.

@bprjctx: enough that I stopped watching tv lol. For me that's been the best part of the trend of the last few years of stuff like Netflix bankrolling original series.

I'm in the UK. I'm used to there being no ad breaks at all on almost everything I watch. That's just on the BBC channels, but it seems to stop the commercial channels from going too crazy.

I visit the in-laws in Canada most years, and find the TV there completely unwatchable. Constant ad breaks, pop-up ads and, worst of all, no obvious indication that an ad break has started so you are watching a scene trying to work out if it is still the show you were enjoying.

I feel that the greed for advertising time has pushed people away from traditional TV and will be commercial TV's undoing.

@bprjctx: I don't have access to what would probably be called "TV" by most people (ie, cable or satellite or over the air antenna). All the things I passively watch on screens are either DVDs and Blu-Rays, as well as Netflix/Amazon instant streaming. I do have to suffer through ads on YouTube, but I mute them and look away from the screen if they are unskippable. Having seen TV that is on in the background at friend's houses, I don't get how they watch the shows themselves, let alone sit through the ads.

I cut the cord over fives years ago. No cable TV and I cannot get terrestrial signals in the middle of the ocean where I live, so I don't even have the option of waiting normal broadcast TV. So, I only deal with commercials online on YouTube.

As for why Americans deal with so many commercials? We are used to it. The amount of commercials and their length has not changed radically in 50 years, bt a mere few % really. TV watching with multiple short breaks is what we are used to, and we had "strategized" our lives around it. Go to the bathroom. Grab a cuppa. Discuss something we need to say to someone in the room. Those are all activities we do (or did) during tv watching. Hell, even in 2017 I'm sure added to all of the above there is now, checking Facebook, look at texts, or answer an email during a break.

While there is now the concept of "binge watching" a show where there are no commercial breaks, you can think of that activity as additive to how we watch TV not as a replacement or a change to the basic pattern...at least not yet.

This is the primary reason that I don't watch tv shows on tv anymore. There were certain shows that I would watch every week, but now, I just wait for it to come out on DVD so that I can rent it, or I'll wait for it to come out on Netflix, Amazon Prime, or Hulu. If it isn't available on any of these, then I just don't watch it. Although, it is unusual for none of these services to get a particular show, especially if it's rather new.

Also, the amount of time for every 30 minutes that is actual show is about 22 minutes. So, every hour that means that you're getting 44 minutes of show and 16 minutes of commercials. When you're watching a show without commercials, you'd be surprised just how many more episodes you can watch in less time. If you have an hour long show that's 22 episodes (about the average from what I've seen) with commercials, it would take 22 hours to watch (obviously). If you have the same show without commercials, it comes to only a little more than 16 hours. That's six full hours of commercials, i.e. wasted time, you're cutting out.

I honestly can't remember the last time I watched TV for more then an hour. TV sucks in Europe too.

DVR/Tivo. I recently ran into a circumstance where I had to watch a show live because I was somewhere weird and couldn't tape it, I didnt' know what to do with myself, I remember having to plan out things to do during the breaks, bathroom, snack, etc. Commercials have ruined the NFL for me, I couldn't get enough of it 5 years ago but the amount, quality and repetition of commercials kills it for me, and you can't tape it, no way. I just watch the fourth quarter now like it was basketball.

It's funny how for a few years there, if you ran in Tivo circles, people would say--"Sweet, lemme Tivo this," "Hold on a sec, just gonna Tivo this," etc. to describe the action of saving a show for later. Then cable and satellite companies got DVRs as part of the service and nobody I know really ended up saying "Ima DVR this real quick," we just went back to saying "Tape that shit for me," which I love. I hope to piss off some kid who thinks he's all futuristic one day by saying that.

@jesus_phish : Yes, you hit the head on the nail. I started watching CSI because of this very reason. Trouble is, now that they've noticed people doing this, CSI has become just as bad. I'm going to go over a rough timeline and trajectory of this problem..

- After continuous price increases and lessening movie quality, people stopped paying $20 for a movie ticket, $10 for popcorn and $7 for a watered down soda. They started staying home and watched TV instead.

- The Hollywood movie houses saw this happening, so began a network-gobbling merger fest, that saw every major network consumed. Then came the ads. Then came more ads.. and more, and more etc.

- After this began to make people forget what they were watching, and come away disgusted with the experience, they started looking into these streaming networks they heard about.. Netflix, Hulu etc. Also, some started to download their tv shows and movies from Pirate Bay.

- In response to this, the Hollywood cartel then began to gobble up ISPs (internet service providers), so they could throttle traffic to streaming services, and try to police everyone using torrent sites. After the U.S. court system starts throwing out the masses of lawsuits against regular people (children were most affected), they later settled on bandwidth caps (network congestion is not a problem here, it's singular purpose is to try and limit Netflix and other streaming sites use).

There is a bit more, but for brevity, this is where I'll stop. Less ads for more money would stop this problem, but their greed prevents this from happening. If you followed the points above, you'll see the trend isn't to give a compelling reason to consume their product, but instead, to cut off other options and abuse their customers with impunity (or try to at least). This is why our internet needs to be a federal utility. It's just too damn important to leave to these joker's control. Post Office.. 90% of letter mail is now in electronic form (email). Phones.. 100% of all phone calls (landline (no matter if you have copper lines coming to your home, they connect to internet lines elsewhere), and cell (towers connect to fiber). Even sat phones use data after the downlink if not a sat to sat call.

I can't see one reason for this not to be a protected resource shielded by a constitutional amendment. Call it "Freedom of Communication and Information".

The reason I focused on internet freedom as opposed to try and "fix" the broken and antiquated TV system, is because the internet is tomorrow's TV, and we need to get the greed-based corporations away from it. Like I said, it's just too damn important for these fools to monkey around with.

Like a fool, I have cable. I haven't watched television in years.

I think it's time to change that.

@captain_insano: Or how about a 4 hour SuperBowl that contains a one hour football game. When the Patriots are in the SB, I record it on my PC and edit out the ads (and I've done this many times now). What I'm left with is a one hour game and 4hrs of nonsense.

I use to have cable but got rid of it years ago. I only use Netflix and Hulu now.

You just kinda sit there.

You're editing out the best part!

Even as someone from the states I don't like American tv structure. Those ads have driven me nuts since I was a kid. Which is why as a adult I no longer watch tv. Nothing is worth having to deal with those brainless ads.

@shiftygism: Football fans who watch the SB watch for the game, stragglers who have no choice because daddy's tv is tuned to it and nobody can change that.. have to watch ads because they don't understand the rules of the game or just don't care for sports.

I don't watch tv anymore and I haven't in years. Ads are the worst interruption to me just wanting to watch something. I switched over to streaming and never looked back.

Why do you think public and cable TV is dying as a service. So many people cutting the cord and moving to streaming services. 57 mill subscribers in the US in Q3 2017 and you know most of them are sharing the account with at least one other person (in my case, four of us share).

In Brazil we don't have as many commercial breaks as in US, but they do find a way to show small banner ads or similar while the show is playing.

I think people get used to it, if they have not experienced anything better it's normal for them. Also, gotta get those capitalism wheels rolling.

This question being asked here is like me walking into a retirement home and asking the people who live there why they tolerate day one patches for video games.

Don't worry, it's plenty infuriating for a lot of us too. It's the reason why I haven't had cable/satellite TV for years. Between Netflix/Hulu/HBO I've got more than enough content to watch forever.

But every time I go to a friend or family member's house and they've got live TV on I always cringe. I can't handle that shit anymore. It's unbelievable how long some of the commercial breaks are, too. Ugh.

I can't do it anymore. We've been all Netflix and Amazon Prime for years now (and currently, the commercial-free tier of CBS All Access, just while Star Trek Discovery is on).

When we go to my in-laws her dad has the TV on 24/7 and it's obnoxious how it's the same few ads over and over again. There are even some show's we're into that you can stream for free with ads, like Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but the ad breaks are so bad we just wait until it's on Netflix.

I don't. Most television is awful.

I do most of my watching on Netflix, Amazon, HBO, Showtime, etc. The rare cable show I watch is streamed anyhow (Taboo, Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul, etc.).

Most TV that I've watched is built around ads with contrived cliffhangers installed for every commercial break, end of episode, or season ending. Couple that with television being written to keep the ad revenue rolling, and you have shows that go on forever, with no direction, and cliffhangers every 10 minutes.

It's asinine.

As someone who now has to do a great deal of work from home, I'm starting to appreciate commercial breaks more. If I watch something on Netflix, it's a marathon and my eyes will never leave the screen. When I watch something with commercial breaks, I get tons of time in between the action to knock out chunks of work. That being said, I still don't like ads in principle and I will do anything I can to avoid ads if I'm watching something that I actually care about and want to give my undivided attention.