I was watching local evening news tonight which I rarely do on weekend.

But I found it interesting that during the commercial breaks, there seemed to be fewer commercials. And a few of them were promos/pitches produced by the station itself, rather than advertisers.

I’m thinking they must show fewer commercial ads during times that aren’t peak viewing times. Because if you watch the morning or noon news segments, or regular prime time programming, there are more commercials and fewer channel pitches.

It’s also similar during the late 11PM news, you get more news pitch ads than advertisers.

The Sunday evening newscast isn’t even shown all the time, as often it’s pre-empted by sports coverage.

Have you noticed this as well?

Not my experience at ALL in my corner of the world! I ditched TV (and about to do the same with YT) because I was drowning in ads! It seems that broadcasters just fill the hour with just as many ads in the quiet hours, I guess they just sell the spots for cheaper at 3AM vs. 6PM!

Each time I play one of my old VHS tapes, I need to process the idea that twenty years ago, a commercial was something like three 30-sec. ads, that's hardly anything! Nowadays commercials are long enough that there's almost more ads than actual content. F/*# that crap. Not too far from that wacky "all-ads channel" concept I imagined as a kid, like "Is that a thing?" LOL.

(Now that I think about it, aren't infomercial channels actually a thing?)

Yes, there are channels on cable that show infomercials all day and night. Never understood the point if those.

But the local affiliates, like ABC, NBC, FOX and CBS used to air infomerials, especially on the weekends. At least it used to be, that they’d air children’s programming on Saturday and Sunday morning because they had to air a certain number of hours of e/I content.

After that, they’d air infomercials after the (short) afternoon news, and possibly again in the evening if there wasn’t other programming like sports or Olympic coverage on.

It also used to be that weekend afternoons were when the sci-fi shows like Star Gate or Star Trek would be on, as well as repeats of syndicated TV shows and also movies.

I’ve noticed that local channels don’t tend to air movies anymore. And the older syndicated shows either.

Another prime time for infomercials was overnight after the late news. Though nowadays I notice them airing repeats of the nightly news and starting the morning newscasts earlier instead of airing as many syndicated shows and infomercials.

There are some cultural variables depending where you are in the world but generally speaking linear TV has gone through quite big change as media in recent decades simply because of how people spent their free time. Over here it's not uncommon that people under 30 don't watch traditional linear tv at all. They probably have tv but only use netflix and such or VoD services provided by the TV networks to watch whenever it is best suited to them. That has to have effect too on how advertizers see TV as format to reach their target audience.

@Foxtronix in Ontario I remember there used to be a infomercial only TV channel called SHOPTV where the "programs" were all 30 min infomercials. There was also the shopping channel, which was similar but at least had hosts selling the products instead of playing recorded ads.

I think they were on cable and I haven't seen either of those channels since getting rid of cable years ago.

@Roi_hartmann - Agreed. I find traditional TV to be pretty restrictive over online streaming as you have to align your schedule to that of your favourite programs. Years ago I used to tape my favourite TV programs but setting the schedules on the VCR and making sure I had enough tape was another hassle. DVRs were still pretty expensive and when they became affordable I pretty much already moved over to online streaming video instead of broadcast TV.

@Cole D - I remember there used to be channels that used to sign off during the overnight hours (after playing the national anthem) but I suppose it was more profitable to play reruns and infomercials instead. Even when the channels signed off they still displayed the test pattern so I suppose the equipment was still being used even though no programs were shown. 

Yeah streaming and such has definitely changed the way people watch TV.

Here we have the Home Shopping Channel (HSN) and QVC (Quality Value Convenience) on cable, not sure on satellite. I remember my grandmother watching those channels often years ago.

At one time HSN even came on over the air TV, at least around the late 1990s and early 2000s.

I do remember PBS at least, going off-air overnight. I usually wasn’t allowed to stay up nearly late enough to see that, but I can remember a couple of nights as a kid staying up until midnight and seeing it go off. The last segment they’d show was the “Jack Horkheimer - Star Hustler” program, and then the sign off.

Sometimes on Saturday mornings I’d wake up early and turn on the TV and the test pattern would be showing. I think 6 AM was when PBS signed on back then.

Nowadays even over the air TV is so different, especially PBS, as you have like 3 sub channels of different programming, where it used to be all on one.

Old analog hight power tv transmitters that used klystron as power amp used huge amount of electricity and produced lots of heat. Due to technical restrictions of klystron amps usually separate aural transmitter had to be used for tv souns. Klystrons also had limited lifetime before it needed to be changed. That's why it was not uncommon at least over here to turn off transmitters completely during night time. Newer semiconductor based ones were more energy efficient and thus keeping it on over night became less expensive. Those also did not have hour limit like klystrons did.