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.
