The "Hoppa" (Hopper)

I love those commercials with the Upper Northeast people talking about the satellite product the "hoppa".
What's great is the ability to not record commercials. You don't have to skip over them. Just skip them altogether. Les Moonvess says he won't be able to pay for the programs he puts out without people watching commercials, but cable and satellite companies pay billions of dollars for the major network stations. So why do we need commercials at all?
When Tivo first came out it also skipped the commercials. They weren't big enough to handle the lawsuit the major networks started so Tivo dropped it and started recording them.
This won't happen with Dish though. They have plenty of money to fight the ailing networks.
The government has stayed mostly silent but they are generally all for commercials. They know it causes us to buy things which is good for the economy.
Then why does NPR and public television not show that many commercials?
And why are their programs some of the most popular out there? It's because they don't have commercials. They have pretty much the same programming as we see on the cable's Science channel and other interesting educational types of programs, but fewer to no commercials.
Why does no one seem to get this?

BTW I love how the commercials on TV haven't gone down at all despite the new law saying they can't be louder than the programs. I guess cable and satellite don't have to abide by it. Too bad that's how most of us watch TV.