I don't think they were talking about TV :)

But yeah, I used to export shows from my Tivo, decrypt them, run them through comskip, re-encode to divx them with handbrake and store them on cds :)

Most 30m shows had at least 7-8 minutes of commercials. Some cartoons had 2 shows in a 30m timeslot, commercials up to the 1m mark, 10m of show, commercial break to the next show, 6-7m of ads, ran up to 2-3 mins before the half our and had another commercial or three shove in the outro.

Yeah, an average consumer looks at price first I guess 🤷