Cable TV weirdness

Why is my cable TV signal acting differently and is this just me/just my provider?

For the past 2-3 months I have noticed some changes to my TV signal, I have plain cable but no cable box. I'm wondering if this makes sense to anyone else.

The changes are;

1. Commercials are now much, much louder than programs; since the dawn of time this has been true but in the past few months the difference has become so great that my wife and I have to dive for the remote whenever one comes on because it blasts out as twice the volume of the show we were watching.

2. Audio/video unsynced; more and more often this is happeneing, sometimes the audio is as much as a second out of sync with the video, this seems worse on some channels than others.

3. Shows cut off at the end; more and more often shows are cut off before they finish, the most consistant one is Letterman, the last 2-4 minutes of the show are replaced with any number of other shows that I have never heard of.

4. Digital type interference; sometimes the video but most often the audio is garbled in that "digital interference" way, just for a split second at a time, the most consistant case is the first split second of each commerical or each show when it comes back from commercial, there is always a little, quick glitch of garbled audio, it's so short my wife didn't even notice it until I pointed it out.

Is anyone out there seeing any of these symptoms or am I losing my mind.. or both? Perhaps they are getting sloppy due to the looming darkening of analogue cable?