Considering that, effectively, you could push one button and normalize volume across the board, one has to assume you punch up the volume during the ads just to piss me off. Gotta make sure we can hear your message while we’re doing anything we’ve been putting off during the brief intermission between ad breaks, right?

But common sense says that if you crank the volume during the ad breaks, your audience will just hit mute. I know I do. You think we will not do this because we don’t want to miss our show when it comes back, or we will end up paying even closer attention than we would otherwise, but the fact is we just miss the first few seconds and hate you even more.

My point is that, rather than placating your advertisers, you are merely digging yourself deeper. A short-term solution that was dead at birth.

You need to be far, far more acutely aware that you are competing with Tivo & the Interwebs. We don’t have to watch your ads at all.

So play nice. Or we will stop showing up at game time.