Where I lived the local cable company boasted something like 250 channels on the base tier. But when your cable box arrived you discovered there were less than 50 actual broadcast channels, and the rest were pricey on-demand channels. I think it was about $5 for a movie, which is more than Amazon Prime today and much more in constant dollars.

Certainly TiVo came in--as well as boxes from cable companies (though I only had TiVo). And, if you really want to go old school, you could program VCRs to record shows if you were off on vacation.

But there was a long period even after cable came in for more channels and potentially better reception when TV was largely on a set schedule.

For a short time there VCRs and DVRs even came with ad blockers that automatically removed commercials!