Honestly. I used to watch my dad have like 4 channels he could switch between so he didn’t have to do commercials. I used to think that was weird, and indicative of some poor character traits. I was a judgemental little shit.
And you can’t do this anymore, at least with broadcast TV. My local diner as a bunch of TV’s on about the place, all tuned to the local Fox, CBS, NBC, etc. affiliates so you have the rare opportunity to see them all at once. They’re all timed so their commercial breaks coincide with one another. It’s down to the split second – every channel goes to commercial at the same time, for the same length of time. It has to be intentional.
That was mostly the case in the 90s as well. On the 30m mark, everything was wrapping up / starting at the same time. In the middle, you might have 30-90 seconds of a show on another channel that was throwing to commercial at a slightly different time.
This is why TBS always started programs at five past the half hour. When the program was finished you would have missed the first five minutes of any program on another network thus encouraging you to stay tuned to TBS .
Honestly. I used to watch my dad have like 4 channels he could switch between so he didn’t have to do commercials. I used to think that was weird, and indicative of some poor character traits. I was a judgemental little shit.
Now this meme is me. I have become my father.
Turns out nobody wants to watch commercials. The cycle repeats itself.
And you can’t do this anymore, at least with broadcast TV. My local diner as a bunch of TV’s on about the place, all tuned to the local Fox, CBS, NBC, etc. affiliates so you have the rare opportunity to see them all at once. They’re all timed so their commercial breaks coincide with one another. It’s down to the split second – every channel goes to commercial at the same time, for the same length of time. It has to be intentional.
That was mostly the case in the 90s as well. On the 30m mark, everything was wrapping up / starting at the same time. In the middle, you might have 30-90 seconds of a show on another channel that was throwing to commercial at a slightly different time.
This is why TBS always started programs at five past the half hour. When the program was finished you would have missed the first five minutes of any program on another network thus encouraging you to stay tuned to TBS .
I had a TV with picture-in-picture. That was a great feature for avoiding commercials.
Used to have it down to a science. 03 Global > 25 YTV > 28 Fox > 32 Spike TV > 44 Comedy Network > 45 Teletoon > 47 TBS > 50 Space
I never had to see a commercial
I did the same thing and I thought it’s pretty normal. You can tell your 90s self that if it makes them feel good
I sometimes attempt to do that with Pluto TV, but they really enforce putting ads at the same time in almost all the channels.