Everyone plays the 30x challenge with the missus, right? Alternate ad breaks, fast forward to the max, see if you can press play bang on the start of the programme. Loud jeers if you overshoot it.
12x is for pussies and kopites.
The day the mrs gets the remote is when she prises it from my cold dead hand, unless its some load of old tosh that she is watching
but I take your point.
The tv companies are getting smarter now though.
The standard old school Ad break went; Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad, Ad, Station promo, programme logo and action
now sometimes it's; Ad, Ad, station promo, Ad, 'false' Ad for placed product used by programme, but fronted by programme logo, Ad, programme logo, action.
Then there's the other old chestnut...the Ads aren't louder, cue 'technical waffle about different production methods and audio frequency etc'...so no, they're not actually 'technically louder' they just seem that way.
They're louder, end of.