A Few NFL Football Calculations

[toobfreak]

Call this a thread about the Pittsburgh Steelers because it is based on their MNF game last night against Houston, or call it a thread about marketing and advertising. I had occasion to record the final Wildcard game last night and had to record it with all commercials edited out (as 20 seperate recordings) which gave me opportunity to derive a few calculations as the recordings represented actual game time vs. marketing.

First, here are a few stats I put together. Consider:

1. Average length of a football broadcast - about 3 h 15 minutes (derived from more than 55 years of watching football), or around 195 minutes. Some are as short a 3 hours, a few run as long as 3.5 or even longer.
2. Actual game time of last nights game - 117 minutes (this includes stoppage for penalties, reviews, injuries, etc.). Derived from the actual recording times off my DVR.
3. That leaves an expected 78 minutes of commercials, which comes out as 40% of the game.
4. Commercials these days typically average about 5.5 minutes the last time I checked. I used this figure and did not collect data on the actual or average commercials last night.
5. Playing time between commercials ran between as little as 3-4 minutes (one was only 1 minute) to the longest being 8-9 minutes. One was even 11 minutes.
6. Putting that all together, that equals to an AVERAGE play time/game time between commercials as averaging out to 5.85 minutes. There were 19 commercial breaks (counting Halftime as just another break). This correlates pretty well with my global estimation of 40% (ending up closer to 44%).
7. This adds up to being about or within 90% of being HALF THE GAME.

Put more simply, when you watch an NFL football game, about 45% of your time (within 90% of being a full half your time) is spent watching ads for cars, beer, food, and medication.

What is the significance of this? When I was growing up, advertising amounted to about 13.3% of a program's time slot (I know, I calculated it). Now it is up to around 40-45%. And programming has gone from the imaginative and daring programming of the 1960s and 1970s (Star Trek, Mission Impossible, et al), to the low-budget reality TV shit they put out now, like talent contests or competitions to see who can be put in a vat full of the most bugs.

Rounded out and put more bluntly, television programming is only a FRACTION the quality (and cost) as it once was (remember Gunsmoke? MASH? Babylon 5?), yet they are putting you through 3X (triple) the amount of commercials!

This is why TV is dying. They starve it of good programming (good shows are mostly shuffled off to streaming services now) while filling it all with crappy commercials. With the cost of programming greatly fallen, advertising time and cost should be going DOWN not up. Which leaves the only conclusion that marketers and owners are milking television to death, killing it off, just to get as rich as they can as fast as they can off collected advertising revenue, even if it means killing the industry.

 

[Darkwind]

Well, about 45 years ago, I started the practice of just watching the game, and there are queues to when they are going to commercial, at least in the football format.

Given that, I'll probably say my non-game-watching is about 20% of the average Joe's like you. ha!

 

[toobfreak]

Well, about 45 years ago, I started the practice of just watching the game, and there are queues to when they are going to commercial, at least in the football format.

Given that, I'll probably say my non-game-watching is about 20% of the average Joe's like you. ha!

What makes you think I watch commercials? I time shift. I typically record all of my TV programming in advance then just skip over the commercials. I was a bit surprised though last night how often breaks in the game synced up with commercials on other channels. You'd think football would go to break at the completion of plays or drives, but they must actually hold up the game for hard breaks.

A hard break is someone between the broadcaster and the viewer who can cut off programming to meet "guaranteed advertising space." Fortunately in live TV, you can almost always still find non-network TV channels who still have good programming to watch until the break is over.

 

[Lockback]

Call this a thread about the Pittsburgh Steelers because it is based on their MNF game last night against Houston, or call it a thread about marketing and advertising. I had occasion to record the final Wildcard game last night and had to record it with all commercials edited out (as 20 seperate recordings) which gave me opportunity to derive a few calculations as the recordings represented actual game time vs. marketing.

First, here are a few stats I put together. Consider:

1. Average length of a football broadcast - about 3 h 15 minutes (derived from more than 55 years of watching football), or around 195 minutes. Some are as short a 3 hours, a few run as long as 3.5 or even longer.
2. Actual game time of last nights game - 117 minutes (this includes stoppage for penalties, reviews, injuries, etc.). Derived from the actual recording times off my DVR.
3. That leaves an expected 78 minutes of commercials, which comes out as 40% of the game.
4. Commercials these days typically average about 5.5 minutes the last time I checked. I used this figure and did not collect data on the actual or average commercials last night.
5. Playing time between commercials ran between as little as 3-4 minutes (one was only 1 minute) to the longest being 8-9 minutes. One was even 11 minutes.
6. Putting that all together, that equals to an AVERAGE play time/game time between commercials as averaging out to 5.85 minutes. There were 19 commercial breaks (counting Halftime as just another break). This correlates pretty well with my global estimation of 40% (ending up closer to 44%).
7. This adds up to being about or within 90% of being HALF THE GAME.

Put more simply, when you watch an NFL football game, about 45% of your time (within 90% of being a full half your time) is spent watching ads for cars, beer, food, and medication.

What is the significance of this? When I was growing up, advertising amounted to about 13.3% of a program's time slot (I know, I calculated it). Now it is up to around 40-45%. And programming has gone from the imaginative and daring programming of the 1960s and 1970s (Star Trek, Mission Impossible, et al), to the low-budget reality TV shit they put out now, like talent contests or competitions to see who can be put in a vat full of the most bugs.

Rounded out and put more bluntly, television programming is only a FRACTION the quality (and cost) as it once was (remember Gunsmoke? MASH? Babylon 5?), yet they are putting you through 3X (triple) the amount of commercials!

This is why TV is dying. They starve it of good programming (good shows are mostly shuffled off to streaming services now) while filling it all with crappy commercials. With the cost of programming greatly fallen, advertising time and cost should be going DOWN not up. Which leaves the only conclusion that marketers and owners are milking television to death, killing it off, just to get as rich as they can as fast as they can off collected advertising revenue, even if it means killing the industry.

I watch no network TV other than sports.
And I DESPISE all the commercials.
My friends and family and I all laugh about it.
"Have you tried Skyrizi yet?"
"No but you should ask your doctor about it. Side effects may include internal bleeding and sudden death."

 

[Darkwind]

What makes you think I watch commercials? I time shift. I typically record all of my TV programming in advance then just skip over the commercials. I was a bit surprised though last night how often breaks in the game synced up with commercials on other channels. You'd think football would go to break at the completion of plays or drives, but they must actually hold up the game for hard breaks.

A hard break is someone between the broadcaster and the viewer who can cut off programming to meet "guaranteed advertising space." Fortunately in live TV, you can almost always still find non-network TV channels who still have good programming to watch until the break is over.

I'll be honest, I went to bed 10 plays into the first quarter. lol

 

[toobfreak]

And I DESPISE all the commercials.

What's to LIKE about them? You are watching a murder mystery, suddenly they whisk you off to an "infomercial" where either an attorney is trying to get you to sue for mesothelioma or some boob is trying to convince you to remodel your bathroom showing you step by step how they do it. Or they are telling you to ask your doctor about 'Ebdlyls' for your rectal leakage (with side effects causing insanity). By the time it is over, you don't even remember WTF you were watching.

 

[toobfreak]

I'll be honest, I went to bed 10 plays into the first quarter. lol

You didn't miss much.

 

[Lockback]

What's to LIKE about them? You are watching a murder mystery, suddenly they whisk you off to an "infomercial" where either an attorney is trying to get you to sue for mesothelioma or some boob is trying to convince you to remodel your bathroom showing you step by step how they do it. Or they are telling you to ask your doctor about 'Ebdlyls' for your rectal leakage (with side effects causing insanity). By the time it is over, you don't even remember WTF you were watching.

God, they're annoying!

 

[toobfreak]

God, they're annoying!

That is why I record everything then skip all the commercials. Even football, if I plan to watch a game, I set the recorder to tape it, then I start watching it about 30-45 minutes in. As you skip the commercials, by the time you get near the end of the game, you've caught up with live TV then you need sit through few if any commercials.

When I was a kid, a commercial was maybe 10 seconds of some friendly lady telling you about a new soap or cleaner to make your life easier. They called them commercial breaks.

They are no longer breaks. It is not a break anymore when the commercial runs as long as the programming. TV now is nothing but advertising with some flabby programing inserted in between.

Worse, the "commercials" now are about serious stuff like lawsuits, dying, poverty, homelessness, bankruptcy or fraud.

 

[Lockback]

That is why I record everything then skip all the commercials. Even football, if I plan to watch a game, I set the recorder to tape it, then I start watching it about 30-45 minutes in. As you skip the commercials, by the time you get near the end of the game, you've caught up with live TV then you need sit through few if any commercials.

When I was a kid, a commercial was maybe 10 seconds of some friendly lady telling you about a new soap or cleaner to make your life easier. They called them commercial breaks.

They are no longer breaks. It is not a break anymore when the commercial runs as long as the programming. TV now is nothing but advertising with some flabby programing inserted in between.

Worse, the "commercials" now are about serious stuff like lawsuits, dying, poverty, homelessness, bankruptcy or fraud.

I couldn't agree more with your take on all of this.
For one thing, I am stunned by the amount of time each hour on commercials. It seems to me there used to be some FCC law or something but apparently that's been thrown out the window.
Nothing burns me up more than Big Pharma advertising. It's their way of controlling the networks because they're the biggest advertisers. Do you think CBS News is going to look into Big Pharma when they're contributed so many hundreds of millions of dollars in advertising to their coffers?
In addition, the ads are aimed more at doctors than patients, which makes no sense to me. Unless you're trying to influence doctors to prescribe your meds more and also control TV networks at the same time ...

 

[toobfreak]

For one thing, I am stunned by the amount of time each hour on commercials.

It has gotten to the point that they have to cut so much out of older programming to fit it into the "available slot" that they often cut out stuff that was vital to the story or maybe the best part of the show. There is no more to cut. How will they show this stuff 50 years from now? What will people do in the future if programming is all 60-70% commercials?

Nothing burns me up more than Big Pharma advertising.

You mean stuff you need a prescription for anyway. I'm not sure, but I think no other country advertises prescription medication directly to the public. I often think about taking down a list of all the crap they sell on TV, it is all stuff I cannot even pronounce. Then going to my doctor and asking him about each ONE BY ONE. Even if they are female medications. Hey Doc, my TV told me to ask you about this stuff!

 

[Mr. Friscus]

Call this a thread about the Pittsburgh Steelers because it is based on their MNF game last night against Houston, or call it a thread about marketing and advertising. I had occasion to record the final Wildcard game last night and had to record it with all commercials edited out (as 20 seperate recordings) which gave me opportunity to derive a few calculations as the recordings represented actual game time vs. marketing.

First, here are a few stats I put together. Consider:

1. Average length of a football broadcast - about 3 h 15 minutes (derived from more than 55 years of watching football), or around 195 minutes. Some are as short a 3 hours, a few run as long as 3.5 or even longer.
2. Actual game time of last nights game - 117 minutes (this includes stoppage for penalties, reviews, injuries, etc.). Derived from the actual recording times off my DVR.
3. That leaves an expected 78 minutes of commercials, which comes out as 40% of the game.
4. Commercials these days typically average about 5.5 minutes the last time I checked. I used this figure and did not collect data on the actual or average commercials last night.
5. Playing time between commercials ran between as little as 3-4 minutes (one was only 1 minute) to the longest being 8-9 minutes. One was even 11 minutes.
6. Putting that all together, that equals to an AVERAGE play time/game time between commercials as averaging out to 5.85 minutes. There were 19 commercial breaks (counting Halftime as just another break). This correlates pretty well with my global estimation of 40% (ending up closer to 44%).
7. This adds up to being about or within 90% of being HALF THE GAME.

Put more simply, when you watch an NFL football game, about 45% of your time (within 90% of being a full half your time) is spent watching ads for cars, beer, food, and medication.

What is the significance of this? When I was growing up, advertising amounted to about 13.3% of a program's time slot (I know, I calculated it). Now it is up to around 40-45%. And programming has gone from the imaginative and daring programming of the 1960s and 1970s (Star Trek, Mission Impossible, et al), to the low-budget reality TV shit they put out now, like talent contests or competitions to see who can be put in a vat full of the most bugs.

Rounded out and put more bluntly, television programming is only a FRACTION the quality (and cost) as it once was (remember Gunsmoke? MASH? Babylon 5?), yet they are putting you through 3X (triple) the amount of commercials!

This is why TV is dying. They starve it of good programming (good shows are mostly shuffled off to streaming services now) while filling it all with crappy commercials. With the cost of programming greatly fallen, advertising time and cost should be going DOWN not up. Which leaves the only conclusion that marketers and owners are milking television to death, killing it off, just to get as rich as they can as fast as they can off collected advertising revenue, even if it means killing the industry.

Interesting stats.

IMO it'll all come out in the wash. Football has gravity because each game means so much, and when you have an important game in sports you're more tolerant of down periods and the build-up.

Compare regular season baseball to playoff baseball. Baseball just went through a problem with the length of their games because there are 162 of them and they were all taking too long. Each game during the regular season means nothing on it's own. It's 0.6% of a season. Meanwhile, a football game is 5.9% of a season. A quarter of football is 1.5% of a season. 7min and 30sec of football is 0.7%

So a 3 hour baseball game = 7 minutes of football by value of a season.

People were tired of it, the numbers showed it along with the feedback, and the league changed for the better.

Now bring in a playoff baseball game; Game 1 of a 7 game series? People will tolerate a drawn out game with lots of anticipation because there's so much on the line.

People clearly still tolerate football.. and like others (and even yourself if I'm not mistaken) have pointed out, taping the game on YoutubeTV or whatever platform, waiting until like 90min after the game start to begin watching it and skipping the commercials lets you watch a 3.5 hour football game in like 1.5 hours or less.

 

[toobfreak]

Interesting stats.

IMO it'll all come out in the wash. Football has gravity because each game means so much, and when you have an important game in sports you're more tolerant of down periods and the build-up.

Compare regular season baseball to playoff baseball. Baseball just went through a problem with the length of their games because there are 162 of them and they were all taking too long. Each game during the regular season means nothing on it's own. It's 0.6% of a season. Meanwhile, a football game is 5.9% of a season. A quarter of football is 1.5% of a season. 7min and 30sec of football is 0.7%

So a 3 hour baseball game = 7 minutes of football by value of a season.

People were tired of it, the numbers showed it along with the feedback, and the league changed for the better.

Now bring in a playoff baseball game; Game 1 of a 7 game series? People will tolerate a drawn out game with lots of anticipation because there's so much on the line.

People clearly still tolerate football.. and like others (and even yourself if I'm not mistaken) have pointed out, taping the game on YoutubeTV or whatever platform, waiting until like 90min after the game start to begin watching it and skipping the commercials lets you watch a 3.5 hour football game in like 1.5 hours or less.

An interesting angle I had not considered before about baseball, probably because I lost all interest in the sport back in 1990? when the league went on a work strike in the middle of the season. I've relegated myself to only football these days and mainly one NFL team primarily with secondary attention to a few other teams around affecting them.

Hidden in the data above worth pointing out was that not only are commercials taking up 3X more air time than when I was a kid (and I suspect that figure to hold about the same whatever you watch), but that the general running time of the game itself is probably being nearly DOUBLED by all of the time outs and pauses for instant replays and reviews in slo-motion to be sure which millisecond a players foot crossed the white line.