TV ads haven't been unskippable since Tivo came out in 1999. Try exercising that much control over an internet stream these days. We're going to look back at cable/DVRs as the last time advertising was strongly separated from content, without microtargeting, and easily skippable with the ability to arbitrarily navigate ahead/back in the video stream.

Although I will say if I do watch something live I don't find it annoying to mute the commercial and get up or use my phone during that break. What's more important to me is that it's a hard separation from the content.

Baseball is the one thing that's no longer watchable to me at all. The announcers read ads between pitches/at-bats. Muting doesn't work for the frequent 10 second ads that can come anytime during the programming.

I understand broadcast and am worried about its state, not just in tv but also radio. I think it serves a vital role. Not everything has extensive ads. Sometimes I wonder if licensing needs to be more consumer friendly, for the media's own sake if nothing else.

I do think we used to learn how to allocate attention around ads more. Usually it involved doing other things. Sometimes honestly it wasn't a bad thing as it broke your attention to the media.

Cable is my least favorite thing now, per the article. Streaming or broadcast make more sense to me (although streaming is headed to its own self-imposed problems, with packages). Ideally I'd be able to pay for individual products streaming, and get a good mix of locally and otherwise run broadcast outlets.

> I must have been taking a lot of breaks from watching TV to do things.

Or you (we) watched mindlessly because it was a moving image, and humans are evolved to keep an eye on such things to identify predator/prey.