It can be amusing, occasionally. I was having a working lunch with about half a dozen ladies, in a fairly upscale restaurant. The background music was light-weight sorta-Celtic, and nobody was paying attention to it until I said, "Who would have ever thought that people would pay this much to eat while being seranaded by bagpipes?"
I agree about sensory overload, though. And I've found that if I'm lucky, I can sit under the TVs in a waiting room, or at least with my back to them, so the flickering screen doesn't distract me from my reading, or whatever else I'd rather have in my brain.