OT - Wall Street Journal Article on NFL Broadcasts
I did not see this elsewhere, but found it interesting:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB100014240527487042812045750028520555614…
I for one believe we need to start a petition to get cheerleaders more air time.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:00 PM ^
11 minutes of action in a 3.5 hour broadcast. 11 MINUTES!!
No wonder the rest of the world doesn't get our love affair with American football, it's simply irrational.
January 15th, 2010 at 2:37 PM ^
no square root of 2, pi or e in there. Our love affair with American football can't be quantized, so I won't attempt to address that.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:17 PM ^
11 minutes of action in a 3.5 hour episode sounds like one of my wifes complaints.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:32 PM ^
Actually, American football's global audience is growing quite a bit. The Super Bowl routinely draws a worldwide audience of one billion viewers.
As for the lack of action, well, how much real action is there in a typical soccer game? A typical game will have, what, 8-10 shots on goal (between the two teams) in 90 minutes?
January 15th, 2010 at 1:02 PM ^
Have they done this for baseball, too?
January 15th, 2010 at 3:55 PM ^
I believe they had an average baseball game for 13 minutes of live action and an average football game at 12.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:21 PM ^
for the researcher who had to watch the Theisman game.
January 15th, 2010 at 1:22 PM ^
I've not seen one for baseball, though I'd suspect it would come out to a lot more 'action time'. Depends on whether you count the pitcher staring down the catcher, signs the third base coach makes, pickoff throws, each pitch, etc.
Or do we only consider "balls in play"? It could really be broken down.
Also - do bench clearing brawls get included as 'game time' or their own entry entirely?
January 15th, 2010 at 2:39 PM ^
and the plays coming into the headset and such for football.
I think that baseball would just be:
pitch thrown
A: nothing happens
B: he swings and something happens for a brief moment
(I hate baseball)
January 15th, 2010 at 3:42 PM ^
I think it's a lot harder to clarify what "action" is for baseball than it is for football. In football there are 11 minutes of time where the ball is live (out of a 3.5 hour broadcast or a 60 minute game). In baseball the ball is live for probably 2 hours out of a 3.5 hour broadcast.
Obviously there is not "action" for all of those 2 hours. I guess you could count time from when the pitcher goes into his stretch until the ball gets back to the pitcher again.
January 15th, 2010 at 3:51 PM ^
Since the WSJ counted as action only the time between the snap of the ball and the whistle, then I think using similar standards on baseball would yield considerably less than two hours. There's plenty of potential for action in baseball, but there's little true action.
It may be a bit of a stretch to count as action the routine of the catcher throwing the ball back to the pitcher.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:05 PM ^
Your catcher happens to be Rube Baker from Major League II.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:04 PM ^
It is rather interesting to me that they show more than 50% more time showing replays than they do showing the actual plays.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:14 PM ^
In light of that figure, it's interesting to me how many times I don't get to see a replay I want to see because they want to show some contrived statistics or plug a tv show.
I'd bet the introduction of instant replay ratcheted up the percentage of time they spend showing replays. Some challenges can last a couple minutes, and they usually spend that time showing you the replays.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:30 PM ^
Yeah, that's a really good point. I bet you're right that a lot of that replay time does come from challenges/reviews.
As for the network not showing a replay of a particular play, that stopped bothering me nearly as much once I got a DVR.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:27 PM ^
Why, after showing the score/time on the stadium scoreboard, do networks zoom in until it becomes blurry? I've always found that annoying.
January 15th, 2010 at 4:30 PM ^
i read a few years ago that for professional and amateurs alike, in an average 18-hole round of golf, which takes 4-5 hours to complete, the ball is in motion for something around 4 minutes