Watching "the game"

Something of a misnomer...

Football (article from the Wall Street Journal)
According to a Wall Street Journal study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes.

The typical length of a broadcast is 185 minutes, making the actual game ~6% of your typical broadcast.

Baseball (article from the Wall Street Journal)

A similar study of two nine-inning baseball games, one from Fox and another from ESPN.

The result is that during these games, there was a nearly identical amount of action: about 14 minutes. To put that in context, that's about 10.9% of the total broadcast time (excluding commercials).

Add in commercials, and the proportion drops even lower.


Reminds me of the "human" body, where human cells are outnumbered 10 to 1 by bacteria.