Liked the show? Maybe it was the old commercials. The "Taxi" and "Happy Days" research appears to fail to distinguish between a program being interrupted by tod

Liked the show? Maybe it was the old commercials. The "Taxi" and "Happy Days" research appears to fail to distinguish between a program being interrupted by today's commercials versus yesteryear's commercials. Many people delight in old ads, whether they be newspaper ads, magazine ads, movie posters, or whatnot, because they're history. They show us the changes in design esthetics, cultural values & propaganda, fashion, and so on. (I happen to be keen on fonts and women's eyebrow styles.) That's why such things have value as collectibles. I can't help picturing the research subjects smirking at the "bad" ties worn by the Michael Brownstein lawyers. Liked the show? Maybe it was the pacing of the program for commercial interruption. TV ads are not injected at random intervals. They're injected between scenes. But not just any scenes. They're injected after scenes which were written to be followed by a commercial break. In other words, the TV show was designed to be enjoyed with the breaks. For example, contrast made-for-TV movies (designed for breaks) with made-for-theater movies (designed for continuous viewing). Watch an adless video of a made-for-TV movie, and you can see the story build to a little climax every few minutes, and more frequent climaxes as the story progresses. The ever-increasing climaxes get so tiresome, in my taste, that they cry out for interruption.