When I say that I worked in radio and TV traffic, most people think I provided the traffic reports for the morning rush-hour commuters. What I really did was schedule and control the commercials that played during a station's commercial break.
Working in traffic has completely changed the way I listen to radio or watch TV. Now nothing grabs my attention quicker than when I hear two competing advertisers running back-to-back in the same commercial break. Ugh! The rule of thumb is to not schedule competing advertisers in the same break. When this can't be avoided, you have to try to separate them with non-competing advertisers. For example, a 2:30 break would look like this: car dealer, pizza place, lawyer, furniture store, car dealer.
It's become second nature for me to notice commercial breaks, having spent hours moving spots on station program logs to keep competing advertisers separated. I've found that people think I'm crazy when I try to explain why that commercial break could have run better.
Unfortunately, it's not something I can turn off. And my obsessive attention to radio and TV traffic may be annoying to friends and family. But at the end of the day, I'm better at my job because of it.