TV commercials are impossible to put up with. They are almost painfully annoying. When I'm visiting my family I just have to turn off the TV, it's impossible to concentrate on conversation otherwise.
The worst part is that TV ads are a major part of shared culture. People watch many different channels and many different shows, but the large ad campaigns transcend those boundaries. They squat in the shared mind-space and instruct everyone that 'buying your kids junk-food will make you a happy family' (or more insidiously 'your parents should buy you junk-food, because that's what happy, normal families do'). I actually saw one today which discouraged you from asking your friends for help, apparently it's better to pay the company to do repairs than go through all the hassle of having to repay a favour. These sort of campaigns beggar belief, either they are ineffective, or they must surely do serious collateral damage to shared values.
But I think they do do quite a lot of cultural damage.
It is pretty awesome.
I don't have the TV on much at all to be honest. I don't understand the people that have it on all of the time, from waking to sleeping. Some people put it on as "background noise" but that doesn't make sense to me - you might as well tune a radio into FM between the stations for background noise or buy a white/pink noise generator and put that on!
It was strange at first for new people, but surprisingly effective.