>>>>Actually I was sufficiently pis*ed off to write a little form with three buttons and three textboxes, each of them showing accumulated time since its associate commanbutton was clicked. First one was for content time, second one for self-advertising (i.e. "coming up next", "you're listening to", "our website" and such) and the third one was for paid ads. I've measured the 23:00 news on CBS and NBC a few times, and it's about 55% content, 12% self-advertising, and the rest is paid. And I actually stopped measuring right after weather - sport is of absolutely no interest to me. In my view, the 30 minutes of "news" boils down to about 10 minutes, out of which any local grease fire or gas station robbery gets about three times more time than events in the whole rest of the world.
>>>>
>>>>>Whats new is the advent of the terribly admin-friendly Faux channel.
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>>>>Not quite new, but you couldn't know how Miloshevich's RTS worked :).
>>>
>>>And here I thought you were way too smart to watch local TV news, much less view it with a stopwatch in hand.
>>
>>Got into the habit after hurricane Isabel - the weather on the web being a tad slow at the time. Not that I'm watching this regularly - the only regular thing there is hitting the red button immediately after the weather report. And after a while I learned to read the weather report as well; they actually say anything of relevance in the first fifteen seconds, the rest is just a rehash.
>>
>>> Good lord, what a waste of time.
>>
>>Got to feed your pets, even when they are pet peeves :). I actually just wanted to have some good numbers to back it up. Measured just one of each channel, and didn't even bother with ABC - they're probably the same.
>>
>>>We all know it's a wasteland. That doesn't mean the rest of the U.S. news media should be chucked off the cliff.
>>
>>Probably not, but then I was sufficiently P.O.'d by the cable TV offer to cancel everything but the basic cable. Once they have a la carte at a reasonable price, I'll reconsider.
>
>
>Ah, but they won't. One of the top cable execs was already hauled before Congress and as much as said that if Congress forces them to offer a la carte pricing, most customers will wind up paying more, not less. They have truly endless ways of sticking it to us. Cable is very near the top of my list of industries I love to hate.

I hear you. Sunday morning. 100 channels of paid-programming and 20 channels of religon. And I pay for this? If I do then why do I not have a say as to what to show? But with ComCast cable I do have "On Demand". Yah, sure. The only free stuff they offer is stuff I have either seen or don't want too. Beside, around my home, if my wife is awake, the TV is on the LifeTime Movie Channel, 24/7.

Speaking of my wife (I dear!), She amazes me. Last night, a preview for a movie came on. She says to me "I have already seen that movie.", then the preview ended with "Coming to a theater on Jan 23." I looked at her and said "Wow. I wish I could see movies before they came out like you."