Commercial Break in Progress

Interesting. Thanks for the tip.

Thank you for sharing that.  That is really useful information!!

Is it possible you weren't up to 'real time', and when you changed the channel and changed back you jumped up to 'real time'?

Exactly. Commercial breaks in progress do not cover up live tv programming. It's possible your dvr was behind some and switching channels put it back to "live"

I was pretty sure it was live all these times but I couldn't swear to it.  So I just went to CNN, made sure I was live and then waited for the next commercial break.  The notice came up, I flipped forward and back to CNN and the notification went away.  

So it definitely appeared on live TV and I was on real time. 

They aren't supposed to remain after the programming comes back, but there are sometimes errors in the time sync, or errors in the local commercial handling, either of which can cause this problem.  It's been noted numerous times on DirecTV Stream and its predecessors - I don't know if it also happens on other services.  I semi-suspect if they inserted PSAs or house ads rather than their "break card" it would happen less frequently.

This may be something only affecting CNN right now.  It seems to happen just before they go back to their live programming and there is usually a short promo for one of their upcoming shows.  That may be affecting that time sync thing.

My wife never watches CNN (unless they start playing Hallmark movies) and she was the one who told me about the channel changing thing as I guess Hallmark sells a lot of local ad spots.

It happened to me today on TBS.... I was watching Friends and after a couple of commercials I got the Commerical Break in Progress message. It took me a few seconds to grab the remote, but when I changed channels and immediately changed back to TBS and it took me to live programming.  (I verified it was 'live' by trying to fast forward but it didn't have anywhere to fast forward to.)

My assumption is since I switched back when the channel (TBS) was in the middle of a commercial, it did not see whatever flag is set to make the Commercial Break in Progress message appear (instead of the live program).

A couple of other notes...

- I was assuming the original poster meant when they changed back to the original channel it was showing the actual show, not a commercial. Likely a bad assumption on my part.

- Ironically during my test...

- - it happened my me on TBS (which is/was related to CNN)

- - the commercial that was on when I switched back to TBS was for CNN

lol

Up till now when I switch back it usually has a second or two of a CNN promo and then the show itself starts.  Yesterday it switched back to a commercial for the shyster law firm doing mesothelioma cases and that ran for maybe 5 seconds.

Dtv stream sells ad space on national channels, mostly to local businesses in each tv market. Sometimes those ad spaces don't get filled and that's why you see the commercial break in progress screen.

Well, maybe ad sales are down....lol. Who cares.

I assume that was rhetorical, but…

If their ad sales are down, then so is their ad income.  That income helps offset their costs and keep rates down.  If the money isn’t coming from there, it’ll have to come from somewhere else. The only “else” is us, in the form of higher monthly rates.  So I care. 

I wasn't making a comment on ad income. The who cares is b/c the poster seems irritated at having to see "commercial break in progress"