re: #159 Wendell Zurkowitz ((slave to the waffle light))

A long time ago, I caught the Super Bowl on German TV. This was before the private broadcasters picked it up and started running fillers and commercials.

But back then, it was on public-financed TV, which is only allowed to air commercials from 8am to 8pm.

So during the commercial breaks, all we got was slow pan shots of the stadium and lot of entirely un-self-conscious players stretching, scratching their butts and spitting out Gatorade, as they knew that everyone was busy watching the Diamondvision screen…

And I was amused because this broadcast time was being sold in the USA for something like $5 million per minute…

I have vague memories of German soccer games airing on our PBS station late in the evening. It was strictly one top-of-the-arena camera panning back and forth. It didn’t really encourage enthusiasm for the game—it looked a bit like Monty Python’s “Philosophers’ Football.”