The golden age of advertising? A scene from the first ever Oxo TV advertisement, screened in 1983. Photograph: PA
Time was, the ad breaks were just an occupational hazard of watching shows we weren't already subsidising through the license fee. Persistent claims that British advertising was the best in the world occasionally persuaded even the most jaundiced of us that the Oxo family, the Guinness Horses campaign and other "classics" were a deal more entertaining than the programmes they sandwiched. Very few would make such a claim now.
Satellite and cable have changed everything. With so many channels blighted by that much-hated Picture Loans advert, and even the Beeb's digital stations carrying relentless promos for their own output, there's really no escaping the cursed ad break. No, even deft use of the remote won't save you - I tried this out and hurtled through 29 advert breaks before finding a programme. And that's not the worst part of our impending and compulsory digital future. Now there's programme sponsorship.
These days, everything from Coronation Street to Big Brother is covered by one lucrative sponsorship deal or another. The same bland message, jingle or logo appears in every break of every episode until the series ends or the channel pulls it. I wonder if it's ever occurred to anyone that the sponsorship stings might occasionally be to blame for dwindling audiences? The better the programme, the more intolerable the curse becomes. Flick over to Eurosport for their admirable, free-to-view Grand Slam coverage and you have to endure Rafael Nadal endorsing Kia with the phrase "Who's Next?" every two to four games. That's roughly every eight to 12 minutes. Over the course of a three-hour match, I challenge you to not be hurling your racket through the screen by the end of it.
Admittedly, Domino's Pizza's success in creating awareness of their product through association with The Simpsons makes a commercial case for sponsorship, but lesser examples are not so clear-cut. Is anyone watching American Idol on ITV2 seriously inclined to try a Chicago Town pizza? Somehow, I find it hard to believe. I find it even harder to credit that a contest celebrating genuine talent is in any way helped by a bunch of drunks doing karaoke.
Programme sponsorship is regulated by Ofcom, which dictates there should be no more than 12 minutes of advertising in any one hour. Content is regulated by CAP. Such saturation sponsorship seems to be falling through the crack between the two organisations, and the problem is clearly getting worse. It may be naïve to think that viewers might one day rise up from their deep-dish pizzas to do something about it themselves. But we can always hope.
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