NFL football

Yesterday I saw two of the NFL playoff games, and watched them live in English on the sub-channel. They started early in the morning so they did not interfere much with my day.

NFL football is on cable TV and NHK quite often, but usually the games have been edited so that the timeouts have been removed and they last from two to three hours. Since yesterday's games were live, they went on for what seemed like forever, all of the timeouts were broadcast. After watching a lot of soccer and rugby, both of which offer more or less continuous play, the amount of non-playing time during the game was stunning.

What was really interesting was how the two stations handled the timeouts. During the first game, the station ran one ad over and over again and then filled the remaining time with NFL highlights, running the same short tape over and over again. The ad was for a website where you can buy NFL goods. By the time the game was over, this was driving me crazy.

The other station spent more money and had two Japanese men talking. One was an announcer and the other a former player in the Japanese American football league, quite knowledgeable, too. The only problem was that the voices were not switched on so you had to change the audio setting if you wanted to hear. On the English channel, they played the same pop song over and over again and showed highlight films. At least the films were different all the time.

I hope that I can watch the edited versions for the rest of this season.