Remotes don't help that much if commercials are synchronized. You might as well just go to the bathroom.

HBO and movie channels break the synchronization.

> if commercials are synchronized

Are they? If there are 9 synchronized channels and 1 that's not. I believe that 1 wins, because everyone else switches there out of boredom.

In the States, PBS does not run commercials. Yet the scarcity of people who watch public broadcast may be evidence against that claim. (Maybe average people prefer commercials?)

PBS does run commercials in the US. They're just in a different form.

However, it is true that PBS commercials are not synchronized with commercials on the "standard" channels.

The reason that PBS doesn't win is that many folks prefer commercials to PBS....