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FX shows movies like this: movie for 10 minutes, commercials, movie for 10 minutes, commercials.... A 2 hour movie becomes 3 hours! (One example: Mr & Mrs Smith is 120 minutes but takes 3 hours on FX. I couldn't sit through it!) I avoid watching movies on FX, especially recent movies shown near primetime, I think it's worse then.

I love the way Fox does the commercial breaks for Fringe. They come fairly frequently, but are usually under 2 minutes and start with "Fringe will return in x [60, 90, etc.] seconds." It's just enough time to run to the bathroom or grab a drink from the kitchen or compare notes with whoever you're watching with. Not enough time to get bored and start flipping channels or doing something else. You may even just sit and watch the two commercials (and that's a good thing for the sponsors).

About a year ago, I watched a movie on one of the cable stations (like AMC or something), and they had a different way of presenting commercials. The commercial breaks were pretty normal, except for one thing: there was scrolling text along the bottom of the screen that related to the movie. Stuff like trivia about the movie's production, facts about things related to the movie, multiple choice questions about the plot, quotes from the director.... So you could be entertained throughout the break and never even think of changing the channel. While you would be distracted from the ads by the text, the fact is you would be staring at the screen, hearing only the commercial's audio. So it's good for the viewer, good for the sponsor.

I liked this way better than some of the other attempts at adding extras to movies on TV... Regular trivia and quizzes surrounding the commercials are rarely anything worth resisting the urge to "flip" for. There's the whole Dinner & a Movie and Movie & a Makeover thing on TBS. But come on, who really wants intermittent recipes with hosts no one really cares about? I do like when they play the special features from a DVD before/after the commercial breaks.

Standards & Poppyc--bleep--ck

I hate the way TV censorship works. It doesn't make sense. A word or phrase might be bleeped out in one show, but then included in another show. I guess it's not all based on a clear cut law. It depends on the station, the sponsers, the time of day, etc.. It's just silly.
I hate when a station with pretty strict standards show movies that obviously will need a lot of editing. I remember TBS aired Glengarry Glen Ross, written by David Mamet. It was a lot of "Forget you! Forget this place!" and other ridiculous phrases. Or when a station whose programming is full of content bordering on indecent airs a movie similarly indecent, and bleeps out a bunch of PG-rated words. Comedy Central does this with a lot of movies. And then the same channel allows Chris Rock swearing unedited late at night.
Tonight I watched the SciFi Channel bleep the word "ass" in Total Recall and then on ABC Family, a character in Samurai Girl said something about kicking "ass." If it's okay on ABC Family, shouldn't it be okay in a movie with a record-setting body count?
On TruTV they were showing the O.J. Simpson Las Vegas trial closing arguments, and the attorney said (quoting the tape of O.J.) "shit" and it wasn't bleeped. And it wasn't even live--it was footage from yesterday.
TNT allowed "assholes." Usually the "hole" gets bleeped.
TNT also allowed Jack Nicholson's naked butt in Something's Gotta Give. Aren't butts usually censored?

P.S. Check out this great blog entry about writing for MASH and dealing with S&P back then!