I also notice that a lot of commercials are being overlaid on top of WATT.
Maybe your cable headend might be cueing local commercials during the commercial break. Most cable companies had been doing this since the dawn of cable television. If the headend stopped cuing local commercials during the commercial break, you would have seen the WATT bar uninterrupted. Most cable companies also do this on CNBC during the stock market coverage. Whenever a local commercial is cued on CNBC, the cable system interrupts the stock ticker. The same thing also happens on all of the ESPN networks. Whenever a local cable commercial is cued on one of the ESPN channels, the "Bottom Line" score ticker also gets interrupted during the local commercials before returning to the main national feed.
TWC had always been like that since the WeatherStar III era back in the '80s. Whenever any STAR model receives a local severe weather message (Watches/Warnings/Advisories, etc.), the cable company could interrupt the severe weather crawl or scroll every time a local commercial is cued. Local EAS alerts are like that too.