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 .
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 .