commercial breaks

This topic has been discussed ad nauseam. 

ad nauseam.

Ludwick577, I see what you did there.

MissingReno, As has been said, the content provider (i.e. the channel) determines the breaks and their durations.  While DIRECTV can put commercials into the already determined breaks, pursuant to their agreement with the content provider, they are not extending the breaks.

CNN, for example, does not interrupt their program's host mid-sentence to go to a commercial. Something else is going on here. Yesterday,while watching a 30 minute  program, we had 3 interruptions as well as the usual ads. The duration of the unscheduled 'breaks' now exceed the viewing time. It is also now across all 15 or so channels that we watch, excepting broadcast tv channels. But only DirecTV streaming seems to be affected. I was hoping to find some answers on this forum but apparently there is nothing of substance to discover. Play nicely Loosewick..."ad nauseum" is unnecessary. 

Sometimes insertion software does not work properly.  There are signals in the video stream to indicate "a commercial goes here."  Yes, interrupting content midstream like that shouldn't happen.

Thank you, JefferMC but a question: why is this problem becoming across the board with most channels we watch now as last summer it was only an occasional interruption? And why is each 'break' times lengthening so brutally? Thanks for any help! 

I watch CNN around 5 or 6 hours a day and I've never had a commercial break interrupt a program in mid sentence. Those commercial break screens happen when local ad spaces are not sold on networks. Usually cable or satellite providers run commercials for their own products when local ad space is not purchased but Dtv stream doesn't fill all those spaces. This happens on youtube tv as well. This has been discussed many many times in this forum.