MLB isn't going to reduce the advertising time. If they actually find a way to "speed up" the game, they'll probably expand the advertising breaks to keep the overall broadcasts just as long. Monopoly greed...
I just have to say...
Television adopted advertising as a way to pay the bills - in an era where broadcasting was over the air, and consumers just bought at TV set and turned it on, and payed nothing else.
In Britain, rather than placing advertising on the BBC, Parliament imposed a tax on TV sets, and used the revenue from that to fund advertising-free TV broadcasting.
Enter cable. Cable providers charge you a monthly subscription fee for their services. A large and growing fee. So why do cable channels carry advertising at all? Because it allows for large profits, and because it's basically unregulated. Monopoly (or near-monopoly) capitalism without regulatory restraint. So cable companies get so wealthy that they can buy up former broadcast companies, and buy up content producers as well... and they continue to constantly interrupt programming with annoying advertising.
I'm not a cable subscriber, and most of the (relatively little - an hour or two, maybe three nights a week) TV I watch is streamed (Netflix, Britbox, Amazon Prime). Costs are reasonable (considerably less than a cable package) and there is NO advertising intruding on the programming. When I'm "forced" to watch an actual broadcast, I'm struck by the constant interruptions, and by the ads' high audio levels and insane camera cuts. If their intent was to annoy and offend, they couldn't have done better.
I find it unfathomable, frankly, that people put up with this.
And yeah, that means I don't sit and watch the Phillies much. Gameday audio; I'd probably stream Phils' video, except they've sold their souls to the cable companies, and streaming is blacked out. But that's OK. Some things are more important, and not being bombarded with crude advertising is on the list.
