I don’t see the point of television these days, especially if you have easy access to internet. I have almost no clue of what’s happening in the world except the big global stuff, nevermind my country. We’re getting poorer, less jobs, yadayada… I bet that’s what’s going on in the news.
And I don’t watch media, I rather watch clips of movies I grew up with on YouTube.
I am older than you, but not by much. I too remember channel surfing, which I guess was the equivalent of scrolling through your phone. Frequent ad breaks were not really a thing in my country until early 2000s, when private TV stations began to take hold, and by then I had already switched to PC gaming as a primary source of entertainment. I’ve done everything I can to banish unwanted advertising from my life, the only one I cand stand is Steam sales, but only because I can get hours of etertainment for a symbolic price.