Los Angeles -- Here's a really depressing piece of news: Audiences are starting to like seeing commercials when they go to the movies.

Screenvision Cinema Network, the company that supplies ads to 7,600 U.S. screens -- about a third of the country's total -- says advertising has slowly become accepted -- nay, a welcome -- part of the movie-going experience.

"Over time people have become subliminally conditioned to the fact that advertisers will talk to them anyplace they go," said Dennis Fogarty, president of Screenvision, whose company sells a block of three to four minutes of advertising to theaters.

In 1988, about one-third of audiences opposed advertising, one-third favored it and a third didn't care, according to the company's random tracking polls. Now, says Fogarty, between two-thirds and three-quarters like the commercials, and only 2% to 3% object.

The next step, of course, is to increase the ad time.

"We're going to settle in where we are for a little while, make sure we've got everybody comfortable, then slowly push it forward," Fogarty says. America, he notes, is way behind other countries; France has an average of 20 minutes of ads before the movies, England about seven. (Sure, but they don't suffer commercials on TV!)

One exception is Los Angeles. BMW has launched a new ad campaign in theaters to hype its Z3 Roadster but has scaled back in Tinseltown to avoid upsetting sensitive industry folks.