Are political ads (directly by politicians or the new PAC type ads) run during an election cycle considered to be 'commericials'?

If YES, there is NO WAY any politicians is going to wish to limit the amount of time these are on. As we saw in Florida, politicians want to run political ads as much as they can. They also tell us these ads create jobs!

Of course not you Fred! Glad to see you understand I was making a joke. Trust me I heard what you are saying very clearly and get your POV. I play my guitar during commericials, which drives the wife nuts.

So while I might tune others out, I wouldn't do that with you.

Fred, I didn't know you were a genius!

So many good words from you, so many ears that will not listen.

Sad, ain't it?

Who, me??

You are looking at it the wrong way around.

When I came along, there were already FCC regulations that limited commercials to about 4 or 5 minutes per half-hour.

I want that back.

There are plenty of "regulations". There are millions of "government regulations". They just don't favor the consumer very much anymore.

Immmmm-possible.

The people at the modern FCC do NOT care what you or I think.

There was a time when government agencies cared. I think maybe as a result of the depression and the Roosevelt years. But that all began to change over time, and today we members of the public are generally just irritants to the government agencies.

There were Congressional hearings in the early 1980s. I think for about 3 years. Then they passed a big law that took charge of Cable TV. They placed Cable and Satellite TV under the jurisdiction of local City governments.

I remember living in a little town where a local motel bought a satellite dish and furnished the major channels to each room for free. The city government got upset over that and filed a lawsuit against the motel owner, saying he had no "right" to set up his own satellite dish.

Many years ago, a client of mine who ran a UHF independent in a mid-sized market refused to deal with the edited versions that he was getting. Thie was when the networks were still airing feature films and the local stations got the versions that were sanitized for the network airings.

So, whenever he could, he would use a store-bought laserdisc as the source, converting to one-inch tape and editing out what he saw fit. Paramount found out somehow and filed a cease-and-desist action, claiming that it was in the violation of the contract.

The station's perception was that it was licensing the titles and not specifically the edited versions. I believe they settled out of court but Paramount and the other majors followed by warning all stations that they were not to use anything but the supplied copies.

But as usual, the major station groups could insist on unedited prints and it the potential deal was big enough, they got their way. I was at Columbia and we had some customers who insisted on 35mm prints and not tape.