It seems that there is an acknowledgement that the number of interruptions by commercials on TV is deterring viewers from watching conventional TV channels. This, of course, is what I believe will drive an ever increasing proportion of the TV audience to streaming services.
http://advanced-television.com/2017/...any-ads-on-tv/
Disney’s Iger: “Too many ads on TV”
Ad-free services from the likes of Netflix and Amazon Prime are seemingly impressing Disney CEO Bob Iger, who has said he believes there are too many commercial interruptions on TV.
Iger added that he and his team were looking at reducing the number of adverts carried by Disney-owned sports channel ESPN and national network ABC. “I think in today’s world we have to be mindful of the number of commercial interruptions,” he said......
This opens up another possibility that could actually prolong the survival of our broadcast TV channels. If broadcasters concentrated their advertisements between, rather than during programmes, this would cause less upset or resistance among viewers and possibly even reduce the outflow towards streaming services. This would of course mean that the cost of advertising would be greater, but the smaller channels could benefit from this if companies with a smaller advertising spend found themselves priced out of the market in terms of the mass audience channels.
In my view, this alone would not be sufficient to save the broadcast channels, given the rigid set schedules broadcasters have to work to, but maybe 'red button' services could be expanded to provide the convenience of accessing more programmes on demand over a longer time span (say 3 to 4 months or even a year).