For all those years that Texaco sponsored weekly broadcasts of the Metropolitan Opera, the broadcasts were run free of interrupting commercials. But the Met can no longer afford to compensate commercial stations for the commercial time. “With the reduction of fees to commercial stations, the cost of the broadcasts will be $5.6 million instead of the usual $7 million. To help the stations make up the lost subsidies, the Met will create 7 to 10 places for advertisements during intermissions , depending on the length of the opera.”