I looked at current advertising costs to see whether $2/episode is justified. Right now advertisers pay about 3.3 cents to put an ad in the face of a 25-54 year-old adult during a prime-time show. In an hour-long show, there are about sixteen minutes of non-program material, though some of that is promotions for other shows and local advertising. Let's say that ten minutes of every prime-time hour includes national advertising. That means advertisers are willing pay about thirty cents per show; two dollars seems like gouging in comparison.

Yes, but people with passengers in the car WITH them actually recovers a bit from risk from what you would see with cell phones, as apparently passengers, during a tricky driving moment or such, know when to shut up or may even alert the driver to dangers in the road.