> watch a few hours of commercials every week, and maybe a few hours of actual show.
If you're ratio of commercial:content on basic cable is anywhere close to 1:1, then you're doing it wrong. Even if you don't use a DVR, the actual ratio on the vast majority of networks is 1:2, or about 18-20 minutes of ads and 40-42 minutes of show every hour.
> Every single time I surf the menu and see something that looks appealing, and change the channel, it's right to 5 minutes of commercials.
That's because you surf away from channel A during the commercials, so of course there are going to be commercials on the other channel. The breaks are all coordinated. It's the same with terrestrial radio. Occasionally there is a network that offsets it's programming by 5 minutes (I think TBS did this for a long time), but those usually don't last long, and revert to the standard of starting on the hour with breaks on the 10s.