>Re ad viewership, actually they do know, at least some of the time. TiVo now sells precise viewing data to advertisers, showing how often ads are viewed, skipped, repeat viewed, etc. I read a story after the Super Bowl that said TiVo's data showed the ads were watched even more than the game (which itself was the most watched SB in a number of years).

I'm definitely not starting to watch any sports now - never did, but now I have a good reason other than dislike. I don't want to be counted among the crowd which actually WATCHES commercials.

If nobody watched them, they'd die a natural death by exhaustion. What actually deurinates me dynastically is that the cost of advertising is in everything I buy. So no matter that I'm not watching them, am shaking the inserts out of the magazines without even looking, am passing all the junk mail to recycling with less than five minutes of consideration (per pound of paper), am not listening to commercial radio at all - no matter what, I'm still paying for all that crap because that crap still works. Because people are buying stuff based on advertising. The higher the cost of advertising, the higher the price of the product; if it's still cheap enough, they must have saved on something - probably quality, or salaries, or benefits, or retirements, or taxes...