Damn annoying it is too.
Can't stand it. Whats also annoying is when something old is broadcast in 4:3 and your widescreen tv in it's wisdom stretches the image to fill the 16:9 screen and makes everything look fat. Just wrong. Set the TV back to 4:3 so the image on screen is as it should be. Ok so it might not fill your widescreen bit it'll look right.