>Regulating length of ads is silly too.

It's not really. The limited amount of adspace, about 10 minutes full screen and 4 or 5 minutes side, some banners, have greatly increased the value of ads on TV.

More expensive ads also means the ads are of much higher quality and less annoying than the US ads.

Buying the content is of course always an option but this is largely form an era before buying content was even an option or required extremely expensive VHS players.