In the UK, we get three or four per hour on the most popular commercial networks. We record everything we want to watch on a Humax just so we don't have to suffer the ads, and pause for a piss, drink, or surf as and when. Or rewind parts we didn't pay enough attention to. Or skip bad segments. I wouldn't bother otherwise. I'm sure it's provider dependent, but US shows appear to have ads every 5mins, and that looks like torture.