Commercial breaks in pay-network shows?

Catching up on the HBO series Westworld the other night, and I realised...it looks like it's plotted-out for commercial breaks. Seems there are definite breaks in the episodes that would acommodate spot breaks. Not seeing bump slides or a second of tv-black or anything that obvious, but if another network were to run the show, they might just have enough of a guide to insert breaks.

Also noticed that a few weeks ago with the Netflix series Travelers, a time-travel show.

Seems as if that would be counter-intuitive for a non-sponsored network or programming source would need to plot out a show to fit breaks in, but at the same time, maybe the producers just wanted to have their bases covered if they were able to peddle it elsewhere? But if I'm a premium movie channel bankrolling a prestige series like you could only find on "a channel of our quality and reputation", why would I allow the producers to retain this level of flexibility...?

So, if a show such as these were to end up getting placed onto some other network or netlet, what sort of a channel would that be? Basic cable? A TNT/IFC/FX platform, perhaps?

 

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They got people to pay for TV with commercials in it (cable) years ago, so why not this?

 

Because the folks funding the production, don't run commercials in their films?

 

I've worked on Netflix and Amazon shows where the producers and editors completely disregard any kind of concern about act breaks or commercials or any of that stuff. In HBO's case, it might be a producer decision to say, "hey, let's fade to black here, let the audience think about what they just saw, and then cut to the next scene just to be dramatic." It may be a coincidence that this moment happens to also work as an act break for a commercial.

I have also done the opposite: taken an American show and then cut it together to eliminate all the commercial breaks for the BBC, so it appears to be one continuous program. We had to jump through a few hoops to figure out how to segue the music and otherwise make it not too abrupt and weird.