I'm with you there, imhotep. It's also one of the main reasons I won't watch any film on ITV, Channel 4 or 5 (grateful for having the full-fat Sky system).
I'm sure that I read somewhere that the rules on advertising are being relaxed, so that may allow longer ad breaks during programmes (there's only supposed to be one break every 20 minutes as it is, but there's one after about 5 minutes in almost anything on Sky 1 - you're lucky to go 20 minutes with something on ITV before you get an ad break, even then they can cram in 3 or 4 ad breaks into 1 hour's programming).
ridiculous ( not you, question asker ;-) )