Mostly just standing around

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A cool article and charts from the Wall Street Journal with some surprising numbers about an NFL football game. Well, maybe not surprising, but I just never realized it.

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.

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. 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.

And some crazy numbers about the manpower and money involved:

In the past decade, regular-season football telecasts have evolved into major productions that can cost between $150,000 and $250,000. Networks say they have anywhere from 80 to 200 people on hand per game with dozens of cameras. (NBC says its broadcasts require seven production trucks.)

[Wall Street Journal - 11 minutes of action]