Now that we’ve all just spent an entire evening glued to our big screen TVs watching the Super Bowl, I thought it would be a decent time to reflect on exactly how much football we saw over the last four hours or so.
It turns out, not that much.
According to an analysis by the Wall Street Journal, the typical NFL football game contains a paltry 11 minutes of actual game play. The rest of the time is taken up with huddles, time-outs and running the clock down.
TV producers have gotten creative over the years trying to find ways to keep a dreadfully slow and rather boring game engaging to viewers back home.
So what do the networks do with the other 174 minutes in a typical broadcast? Not surprisingly, commercials take up about an hour. As many as 75 minutes, or about 60% of the total air time, excluding commercials, is spent on shots of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage or just generally milling about between snaps. In the four broadcasts The Journal studied, injured players got six more seconds of camera time than celebrating players. While the network announcers showed up on screen for just 30 seconds, shots of the head coaches and referees took up about 7% of the average show.
If you think the networks are a little too fond of cheerleaders, you may be mistaken: In these broadcasts, only two networks showed cheerleaders at all. And when they did, they were only on camera for an average of three seconds.
But of course we all really watch the Super Bowl for the commercials. Thanks to Hulu, we don’t even have to sit through the football to enjoy and rate those this year.
I consider myself to be something of a breakfast cereal connoisseur. I’ll eat it for breakfast, lunch and dinner and relish trying out the latest sugar-based concoction, regardless of how unhealthy it appears. My motto is simple: if you can put it in a bowl and pour milk over it, I’ll try it.
While sitting down with a big bowl of cereal, I’ve often thought long and hard about how to improve my breakfast favorites. Top on my list is inventing Cocoa Puffs or Cap’n Crunch Berries that don’t cut the roof of your mouth.
But I had always thought that Cookie Crisp was the zenith of cereal development. Then the good men and women at Post came out with some better: Cupcake Pebbles.
If this is not proof that the American Ingenuity is alive and well, I don’t know what is.
In honor of the Commercial Bowl, I thought it appropriate to reflect on the wonderful ability of Madison Ave. to not only sell us products, but also lift our national spirits and restore faith in the American dream as well. The NASDAQ Visionaries ads were quite good, but no one does it better than Allstate.
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For decades there was only one way to use the humble ketchup packet, and it was messy. Now, fast-food lovers have a choice: the traditional squeeze play — or the option to dunk.
You want fries with that, in the minivan? No problem.
The new ketchup pack, unveiled Thursday by H.J. Heinz Co., is shaped like a shallow cup. The top can be peeled back for dipping, or the end can be torn off for squeezing. It holds three times as much ketchup as a traditional packet.
Americans have never been very honest about the kinds of books and entertainment programming we enjoy. For instance, for some reason or another, we all seem to pretend to like classical music. When in polite company, we profess to listen to it. We say it is a tragedy when the local NPR affiliate cuts back on its classical programming. And those of us who participate in the listening-habit surveys that determine the size of radio station audiences habitually lie about how frequently we turn in to classical stations.
But a new technology has finally called our collective bluff.
Radio ratings firm Arbitron has developed a new device that survey participants wear on their belt. The device picks up sounds and analyzes them to determine, which, if any, radio stations people are listening to.
Since 2007, Arbitron has deployed some 57,000 of these devices across most major radio markets. And the results they are producing are wildly different from what their respondents used to self-report in journals.
It turns out that the market for classical music is 10.7 percent smaller than previously thought. Also, fewer people are listening to talk radio or Spanish-language stations than say they are, according to a story in the New York Times.
So here is my proposal. Now that we all know that we’re lying to each other about liking classical music, perhaps we can just stop. Call a truce, as it were. If nothing else it will hasten the transformation of public radio into a decent news service.
It has been a little more than seven months since I sent an open letter to VISA asking them to help crackdown on merchants who try and cheat customers by charging minimums for credit card purchases.
I still have not received any response. I suppose I will try sending it in again.
Yelp! should tell you if a restaurant offers free refills or not.
They tell you if restaurants serve alcohol, take reservations, deliver and are good for big groups or kids. But there is no information on whether or not the restaurant is going to nickel-and-dime you on soda refills. For a thirsty dude like me, that information can be just as important as if they accept VISA.
P.S. If you want to become my friend on Yelp! or check out my sometimes scathing / sometimes adoring reviews, you can find me here.
Over the last 6 months (since I installed Google Analytics), Free Refills & Why I Love America has had thousands of visitors from nearly every corner of the globe. Hits came from 6 continents, 75 countries and 49 states. Virtually every nation and state that is home to a McDonald’s sent visitors to this blog, save one: Wyoming.
I know Wyoming is the smallest state and all, but still I have to admit I am a little offended. Sure I was always a little suspicious of The Equality State. After all, it is full of people who don’t seem to mind calling Dick Cheney their neighbor. But really, there is no one in Wyoming sitting around googling “cell phone bans” or “Big-Gulp sizes” or any of the other key words that frequently bring visitors to this site?
Since Wyoming apparently has no love for this blog or the things that make America Great, I’ve decided that I’m no longer going to have anything positive to say about Wyoming (not that I ever have in the first place, but…). From now on it will be my least-favorite state.
Negative campaigning is one of the great things about America. And thanks to the Internet and an increasingly competitive economic environment, we are seeing more negative ads than ever targeting both politicians and companies.
A friend sent me a link to this ad out of the Orleans Parish Coroner’s race (I think Coroner is one step up from Dog Catcher). It is pretty fantastic, but I’m not sure if it is better than the Agnew for VP ad.
What do you think?
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What makes America great are the little institutions, like free refills, drive-thrus and air-conditioning.
This blog is dedicated to cataloging them and offering commentary on the latest developments and challenges to the American way of life—with a healthy dose of Europe-bashing on the side.
Now that we’ve all just spent an entire evening glued to our big screen TVs watching the Super Bowl, I thought it would be a decent time to reflect on exactly how much football we saw over the last four hours or so.
I just love it when Corporate America unilaterally makes my life better.
