"WE'LL BE RIGHT BACK."

That's the lie the David Muir repeats every weeknight on the ABC News. Oftentimes he says it right after a single news story. If you think "right back" means immediately or quickly, you'd be wrong. Often there are as many as eleven commercials before they are right back. There are commercials for cars, pharmaceuticals, household appliances, beauty products, breakfast cereals, electronics, etc. Now I subscribe to Acorn, which gives me a wide choice of entertainment, all advertising-free. This service costs me only $4.00 a month. So I can't imagine why the highly profitable networks have to punish their cable-paying customers with so many commercials. My guess is that they don't. Most of the commercials are gravy to them. And they can keep doing it because American consumers don't complain about being deluged with unnecessary pitches while they receive fewer and fewer news stories. It's just another major aspect of the Culture of Greed to which we have, sadly, become inured.