Yes thats no exaggeration I timed it on my stopwatch throughout the hour of play. And it averaged right around 5 minutes and the Sopranos would be interrupted for a commercial. Wow !! What a big dissapointment. And I was sooooo excited to see reruns of my favorite show on A&E. But its NOT even worth watching because of this commercial interruption. I guess A&E had to pay a boatload of money to secure rights from HBO to get and air this show. And they need to secure as much advertising revenue from sponsors as they can to recoup this expense. I think it will affect its ratings on A&E !! Why have to put up with an interruption every five minutes when you can go down to Blockbuster and rent the whole series commercial free ??
Or simply had to somehow fill an hour-long slot after a "basic cable edit" of what was originally a somewhat uncensored 58-minute show. Isn't showing "The Sopranos" on A&E kind of like franchising the Bada Bing strip club in Saudi Arabia?
I never watch stuff like that since they're going to edit the shit out of it. Never. They completely butcher up the material. And yes, commercials absolutely interrupt the flow of the story. In fact, I don't watch any series tv anymore as it airs, I either record it on my dvr so I can ff thru the commercials or get the dvds from Netflix. And movies, fuggedaboutit! Talk about butchering. Occasionally some channel will show something like Glengarry Glen Ross and I wonder, what's it gonna last, like 8 fucking minutes? How could you possibly show GGR or Kill Bill on regular tv w/o cutting it down to nothing? H
I gave up on TV years ago mostly because it sucks, and the incessant commercials. Radio not much better, but I just switch stations of turn it off till the stupid ads are done. Why be a victim of TV when you can control all you see and do on the net?