Do you watch commercials or avoid them somehow?

[rurallib]

I love to watch college sports, Big Ten especially. But all the commercials make me lose interest. That is also true of what little TV I do watch. If it has commercials I often lose interest at the second break if I last that long.

So I am wondering - what do you do at commercial breaks? I don't have a laptop so that way of avoidance is out. I usually start searching around the cable to see what else is on.

So here is a poll:

4 votes, 0 passes | Time left: Unlimited
	I watch the commercials - after all it pays for the show
	0 (0%)
	I leave the station on but ignore the commercials
	0 (0%)
	I use my laptop / tablet / phone
	0 (0%)
	I look to see what else is on and hope to time my return so I don't miss much
	0 (0%)
	I subscribe to a service without commercials
	0 (0%)
	other
	4 (100%)
	0 DU members did not wish to select any of the options provided.
Show usernames Disclaimer: This is an Internet poll

[Jamaal510]

1. I either mute the TV,

do some channel surfing, or surf the Web during commercials.

[rurallib]

2. I do the mute option occasionally

and make snarky remarks about the commercial.

[femmocrat]

8. Same here.

And I DVR a lot, so I can FF them.

[csziggy]

16. I've worn the print off the "Mute" and the "Last" buttons

If there is something I can jump to that does not have synchronized commercial time, I'll hit the "Last" button and jump away from the ads. Otherwise, I just mute the commercials and turn the sound back on when the program comes back - or when I wake up since i often fall asleep waiting for the commercials to get over.

[applegrove]

3. I pick em apart and try to catch the lie.

[hlthe2b]

4. Sometimes... I don't really watch much tv and I mute if they run really long

or are irritating ones I've seen countless times.

But, generally when tv is on, it is more background noise anyway, so I suppose I do absorb some commercials.

[Systematic Chaos]

5. I sit there and make fun of them.

Good comedy, I tells ya!

[LiberalEsto]

6. I almost never watch TV

and if I do, the mute button comes in handy.

[fizzgig]

7. i just tune them out

i'm rarely focusing solely on the television.

[PeteSelman]

9. DVR the show and skip the commercials.

You're kind of stuck when it comes to live sporting events but you can use commercial breaks to hit the bathroom or grab another beer or snack. In those situations commercials are a necessary evil.

[Scuba]

10. I won't watch anything with commercials. I DVR what I want, use FF to skip the ads.

I'm also a B1G hoops fan and feel the last two minutes of many college games to be unwatchable live due to the timeouts/commercials.

So this morning at 0500 I watched Bucky edge 'Zona. Woo hoo! Go Bucky!!

[cui bono]

15. "I watched Bucky edge 'Zona"

That sounds like a new Seth McFarlane show.

[rurallib]

22. yep - those last two minutes of a college Bball game

can be an eternity

[Digit]

11. Usually, I mute them

There have been occasions where the frequency and duration of commercials became so annoying that I stopped watching the program completely and switched to the Roku.

[Skittles]

12. when I watch them, I literally forget about the show I was watching

and walk off......yes indeed

[hunter]

13. My television is just a DVD player.

The only commercials I ever see on the TV are previews for other DVD movies and I can skip past those.

I don't see many ads on the internet either. Most of those are unobtrusive and mostly for technical products I might actually have some interest in.

Animated ads irritate me and I blacklist sites that serve them. Sites like huffington post don't like having their advertisers blocked and subsequently take forever to load, but most content on huffington post is taken from other less obnoxious sites so I don't miss much.

I don't feel bad avoiding advertising. My lifestyle is to boycott pretty much everything, to avoid most "consumer culture," so it's not like anyone is losing me as a customer.

[cui bono]

14. If I'm not watching something on Netflix/Amazon that has no commercials

and I'm watching new episodes on Hulu Plus I sit through the ads, but there's not much to sit through. Oh, sometimes I watch broadcast TV dor local news or fluff TV but I'm usually sorting through paperwork, cleaning house or surfing the internet if that's on so commercials don't bother me.

When I watch online I don't see ads, ad blocker seems to get rid of video ads as well as pic ads.

[DebJ]

17. DVR and skip, or Mute. How to identify the mute button:

it is the first one to go blank / get letters worn off.

[Blue_In_AK]

18. I DVR my favorite shows so I can fast forward through commercials.

Doesn't everybody?

[rurallib]

23. Am doing that with "Cosmos"

looking forward to a day of watching it and zapping commercials.

I used to do that with Jeopardy (~13 minutes without commercials or interviews), but have found their commercials fit nicely with Pardon the Interruption's show and vice-versa, so I get 2 shows watched in a half hour.

[Blue_In_AK]

24. I did that with Cosmos last night.

I watched three in a row. What a great series. I loved the original, and I think this is a very worthy successor.

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

19. The TrueCar TV commercials have me flying off the couch

to find the remote and switch the channel. I've been watching TV since the 1950s and I usually just tune commercials out in my head and don't even know what they're pushing. But those TrueCar commercials drive me insane, like Curly Howard of The Three Stooges when he hears 'Pop goes the weasel'. The absolutely obnoxious music does something to my head. The fact that the second measure of the intolerable tune has one extra beat (suddenly goes into 5/4 time whereas it was in 4/4) kills me too. I hate it when tunes and their time signatures get manipulated and screwed up just to be able to fit the music to the allotted time of the commercial. I sacrificed a bit of my mental stability just to go on their website to find it and attach it to better illustrate the ad I'm referring to.

http://www.ispot.tv/ad/7ZYn/truecar-the-new-way-to-buy-a-car

[Hayduke Bomgarte]

20. Other

I DVR most of what I watch and "zap" the commercials. When watching 'as aired TV' I look to see what else is on, during commercials and hope to time my return so I don't miss much, or at the very least hit the mute button.

[bigwillq]

21. I either flip or do something else

like play on phone/computer, get a snack or drink, go the bathroom, etc.