It's not news that reruns of Friends aren't what cable TV really wants you to be watching. Networks make money by showing ads, and for years those networks have been looking for ways to pack in more and more quick spots to get you to buy Charmin, Tide, and Viagra. Now, the Wall Street Journal reports that many networks are desperately trying to increase the number of commercials you watch per hour, sometimes resorting to subtly speeding up older shows and reruns in an effort to recapture the revenue from tanking ratings.

The Journal notes that TBS used compression technology to speed up the Wizard of Oz during its airing last November, causing pop-culture writer Stephen Cox to notice that the munchkins' voices were pitched higher than normal. TBS, TNT, and TV Land have also sped up shows including Seinfeld and Friends.

Speeding up shows isn't the only way networks are trying to fit in ad time. On TNT, reruns of Law and Order have truncated opening credits—once a minute and 45 seconds long, the introduction is now just 24 seconds. “It feels wrong,” Friends co-creator Marta Kauffman told the Journal about the show's “squashed” opening and closing credits. “It is not how it was shot, written, or imagined. It wasn’t meant to be that way, so don’t make it that way."

In 2014, A&E averaged three more minutes of commercial time per hour than it did in 2013. The History Channel averaged two more minutes year-over-year. The changes come as cable TV is struggling to maintain viewership and fighting for valuable advertising dollars. Still, packing more commercials in per hour may be self-serving to the detriment of networks' relationships with both viewers and advertisers. Commercial clutter not only makes it more difficult for advertisers to get their message across to viewers, it also turns viewers away from the cable TV experience.

“It is a way to keep the revenue from going down as much as the ratings,” a top executive at one major cable programmer told the Journal. “The only way we can do it is to double down and stretch the unit load a little more.”

Cable networks have some tough competition ahead. A glut of commercials has turned viewers increasingly to Internet-based subscription services like Netflix, Hulu, and now Amazon. Netflix and Amazon have also made splashes in developing original content, with Amazon also announcing that it would produce 12 feature films for theatrical release. Even traditional cable networks have turned to delivering “over the top” subscriptions, allowing users to forgo paying for a traditional cable package and just buy standalone content via an Internet connection.

HBO is the most anticipated of those endeavors—it plans to launch its standalone streaming service in March of this year. Earlier this year, Dish also announced Sling TV, a streaming service for $20 a month that comes complete with over a dozen network channels. Sling TV, however, still delivers those hated commercials, and there's no way to fast-forward through them, DVR-style. Undoubtedly, cable TV providers will continue exploring every avenue to ensure that viewers are watching as many ads as possible.