Bloops: The Anatomy of a Baseball Broadcast
Posted by Neil Paine on October 6, 2010
From David Biderman of the Wall Street Journal, here's an interesting baseball follow-up to his football study last February about how much actual action takes place during the TV broadcast of a game.
Biderman found that the typical baseball broadcast contains about 14 minutes of game action (by comparison, an NFL game contained 11 minutes), 88 minutes of players standing around between plays, 10 minutes of replays, 4½ minutes of managers/players in the dugout, and 42 minutes of commercials.
By the percentage of total game time, that makes for 10.9% devoted to action, 3.5% devoted to managers, 7.5% devoted to replays, and 68.6% devoted to standing around. Compare to the NFL, which features 9.4% action, 4.9% coaches, 14.5% replays, & 58.5% standing around, and you can see the big differences in the ways the two sports are presented on television.
October 6th, 2010 at 8:39 am
That's a very cool study.
Back when VCRs still existed, I videotaped a game from the 1996 ALCS and paused the recording between each pitch (or, more correctly, I paused after the result of the pitch, including any play if it was put in play, and resumed just as the next pitch was being delivered.) I was amazed when I played the entire game back--the whole thing took maybe 20 minutes the way I did it.
October 6th, 2010 at 9:13 am
What is "standing around" for some critics is "dramatic anticipation" to the true baseball fan!
October 6th, 2010 at 9:36 am
So to bring baseball viewership numbers back up and do away with the "baseball is boring, football is exciting" mentality, all they have to do is show twice as many replays...
October 6th, 2010 at 11:47 am
People who find baseball slow....seem to turn to football....and people who find football boring....turn to Ultimate Fighting...those who find that slow, turn to illegal street racing! From there you can segue into ever-escalating levels of "excitement," if it's excitement you crave: Perhaps a death-defying life of crime!...or a career as a Soldier of Fortune!...or simply hitting on Mike Tyson's girlfriend....exciting!
October 6th, 2010 at 11:49 am
#3 - And hire someone like john Madden to throw in a BOOM at teh right time - maybe whent he fastball hits the catchers mitt. Who would be baseball's Madden?
October 6th, 2010 at 11:50 am
Very interesting study. @3 - right on. @1 - this is exactly why tabletop baseball games take 20-30 minutes. No balls, no strikes, just results.
October 6th, 2010 at 11:52 am
@5 - gotta be Tim McCarver. Not for the BOOM factor, but for literally everything else.
October 6th, 2010 at 12:59 pm
@1- If I remember correctly, around 1990 or so, SportsChannel here in the SF Bay Area showed a 30-minute replay of that days' Giants game, and they would show every pitch and every play. It was interesting, but hard to get used to...
October 6th, 2010 at 1:03 pm
MLB.com has Condensed Games that show only the final pitch of an at-bat:
http://mlb.mlb.com/video/play.jsp?content_id=12121319
It reduces the game to about 10-15 minutes.
October 6th, 2010 at 1:25 pm
MLB.com has Condensed Games that show only the final pitch of an at-bat
ESPN has the same thing for all at-bats that end in a home run.
October 7th, 2010 at 8:09 pm
I get the joke, KT.