I think the bigger shock is how frequent the ad breaks are. In Ireland, an ad-break 4 times an hour is typical, and often if a movie is showing, it'd be every half-hour or on the hour instead.

In the US it feels like it's every 5 minutes. It's especially jarring watching a show that originally aired on network television in the US, seeing it cut to black or a title card every few minutes where an ad-break would've been.

Wildest of all to me is that some networks add even more ads above and beyond what an older show was produced for, leading to running episodes at slightly faster speeds to fit in that extra ad break.

TBS was infamous for doing this with episodes of Seinfeld, you can find them side-by-side with the original speed airings on youtube.

TNT sped up the Law&Order theme & chopped parts out to fit more ads.

This is anecdotal, but it feels like there are more ad breaks than there used to be. TV is unwatchable in the USA as a result, and I have little doubt that this was a big factor in the rise of streaming.

Streaming with ads is worse; invariably they cut to the ad 2-3 seconds early, then when you get back it's the last two seconds and then the next segment.

I know ad minutes per hour have increased, because older shows have to be slimmed to air. Sometimes that's fiddling with the credits, sometimes on stations that care less, it's dropping minutes of content; I tried to watch an episode of The Munsters on some sub-channel, and they cut to commercial over the punchline of a joke... which ended up just being omited. Thanks a lot.

As a child, I remember a "~30m" cartoon might run until :27 or :56 until credits, etc.

As a teen, I remember the shows would end around :23 or :24.

When it came out I enjoyed twitch, but now it feels worse than TV.

Now I don't watch TV or much streaming content. I tried to find some record or source on length over time, but wasn't able to.