"Commercial breaks––people actually enjoy TV more with commercials." I've never enjoyed being disrupted by commercials nor has anyone else. This is why Tivo became so popular
> The study: Leif Nelson, in collaboration with Tom Meyvis of New York University’s Stern School and Jeff Galak of Carnegie Mellon’s Tepper School, showed subjects three kinds of TV shows: Taxi episodes, nature documentaries, and Bollywood programs. Some watched the shows with commercials, some without. Subjects who watched TV with commercials reported greater enjoyment—and were willing to pay more for DVD collections of shows by the same director—than subjects who watched without interruptions.
Maybe the show is good enough that people want to watch it without interruptions but the show is not good enough that people who have watched it would pay to rewatch ?
So people who dislike commercials also dislike the kind of shows that are on TV and thus aren't willing to watch more or pay for more.
Did those willing to pay more for the DVDs want the ads on the DVD? Or pay more to get without ads?
I think it's a variant of the old "nothing feels good if nothing feels bad to compare it with" chestnut. You could probably replace the commercials with almost anything mildly inconvenient.
> As has been shown with other positive life experiences, people predict and recollect experiences in terms of their imperfect expectations and often independent of their actual experience. As such, after having watched a show with commercial interruptions, consumers may rely on their lay beliefs and later recall that experience as aversive, which in turn will lead them to expect more aversive reactions to commercial interruptions in the future.
-- Enhancing the Television Viewing Experience through Commercial Interruption
If something is less enjoyable than you think it should be, I think "Maybe it's the lack of disruptors" is a fair guess.
Especially with some very intense shows that could be emotionally fatiguing without breaks, and when the timing of commercials is well chosen. It's not just random interruption, they can be used to make segments between like mini acts or episodes.
Or worse, until the next episode which would air the following week...or year if it's a season cliffhanger. I have mixed feelings about binge-streaming, but shoehorned cliffhangers are bad IMO.
It's still nice being able to choose when to take those breaks, however.
(Movie theaters would make more money this way, also.)