I have literally hundreds of available channels since we expanded our cable since I retired. And in all honesty I've never seen so much sheer crap on TV in my entire life. The same movies over and over. Month in and month out. Reruns of every 80's TV show.... Over and over. For Christ's sake, how many times can you watch, "Top Gun" and, "Road House", along with reruns of "Rosanne" and "Reba"?
Back when I was a kid, and TV was free, there was always something good to watch. From 6:00 PM until bedtime. And a typical TV season was well over 25 to 28 episodes. Not like today where a "season" consists of a dozen new episodes. Sometimes even less, before they start rerunning them. Shows like "Wanted Dead Or Alive", "Have Gun Will Travel", "The Rifleman", all ran new episodes from early September to late Spring. They even would call them "Summer reruns", because they wouldn't start until then. And there are more commercials on now then ever before. In spite of paying for cable. Many 1 hour prime time shows are being rerun in 75 minute time slots. All so they can put in more commercials.
"Pop" network is now doing this daily as it reruns the whole 15 season run of "E.R."...... Over and over.... 3 episodes a day. (They are now starting on the third rerun of the whole 15 season show). Every 1 hour episode runs for an hour and fifteen minutes. Back in the 60's and 70's when we used to watch "Bonanza" on Sunday night, they would have only 4, one minute commercials in the entire program. Many others like "The F.B.I.", along with "The Fugitive" were shown in "Act 1 through Act 4", again with only 4 commercial breaks during the entire 1 hour program, finishing off with a one or two minute "Epilog" at the very end, closing the story out.
30 minute shows had only one commercial break at the 15 minute mark. Now they break 3 times or more in a half hour show. It's hard to keep your level of concentration up through the thing. Many times I'll just get fed up, start searching other channels, and abandon one program for another halfway through it. It's not like you're missing anything. TV has really gone to $h!t.