Well, it's about time. For years, it's been obvious that the traditional 30-second TV commercial was an endangered species. With so many competing entertainment options competing for anyone's attention, combined with technology like TiVo, the 30-second spot had a pretty short-life span if TV and advertising execs didn't figure out a way to adapt. The New York Times is noting that for next fall's schedule, nearly all the networks are playing around with some form of more entertaining commercial break. They're all finally recognizing the simple fact that ads are content too, and if you want people to watch them, they actually need to be good content. Of course, we've heard this before. After all, it was four years ago that NBC claimed it had come to the same conclusion and was going to make its commercial breaks more entertaining -- but it doesn't seem like that plan went very far. Though, one good thing in the article, is that it appears that ABC learned its lesson from last year. You may recall last summer that an ABC TV exec claimed that people didn't want to skip commercials and suggested that people wouldn't mind if ABC came up with a technology that stopped people from skipping commercials on their TiVo. However, in this article, a different ABC exec notes: "[Viewers] have control, and we're not going to fight that. We want to make it easy for them to get what they want, where they want, when they want." Of course, it only took them a decade or so of kicking and screaming to recognize that.