In many ways, Netflix is almost too good be true. For just a few dollars a month, subscribers have unfettered access to a vast library of movies and TV shows. Measured against the astronomical monthly payments some cable providers demand, it’s hardly surprising that more and more consumers are saying goodbye to traditional cable.
In the process, consumers are naturally encountering an ever dwindling number of traditional commercials. After all, one of the great things about Netflix is that provides endless hours of commercial free entertainment.
DON’T MISS: Welcome to the beginning of the end for pay TV bundles
Earlier this week, Exstreamist crunched some numbers in an effort to determine just how many hours of commercials Netflix saves us from watching. By factoring in the number of hours the average person watches Netflix programming on a daily basis (1.5 hours) and the aggregate duration of commercials one typically encounters in an hour of broadcast TV (15 minutes and 30 seconds), they determined that Netflix, on average, saves us from watching 130 hours worth of commercials annually. That’s a solid 5 and a half days worth of commercials we can thankfully do without.
What’s more, the report adds that because commercial breaks are getting longer and longer, Netflix’s advantage as a time-saver is only becoming more pronounced with each passing year. To wit, you may recall a report which highlighted how TBS has sped up Seinfeld reruns by approximately 9% to make room for more commercials. Similarly, some older The Simpsons episodes have been slightly edited for time to allow a full 8 minutes of commercial time during a 30-minute time slot.
The video below shows how Seinfeld reruns have been compressed, ever so slightly, in the interest of time.
