Commercials are an integral part of television 'text' and can no longer be appropriately described as 'external' to it. Instead they need to be regarded in their interrelation with the text varieties encountered on the various TV channels, both public and private. The discourse-analytic classification of commercials and the place they have in the flow of TV programs demonstrates the (more or less) free interpermeability of the ongoing TV text. Certain phenomena describable as 'textual mimicry' cement this conclusion. An analysis of viewer mail shows clearly how commercials become part of the...