3/21/2005
This uppercut was brought to you by Darlington
For this one moment in time, I agree with Al Mendoza’s column he wrote about excessive TV advertisements in big time boxing matches, citing the Pacquiao-Fahsan broadcast that finished at 12 midnight when the actual fight ended at about 10pm.
I timed one break during the Morales-Pacquiao telecast and I discovered that the ads totaled about nine and a half minutes showing 24 different products from alcohol (both the rubbing and drinking type), cellular service providers, food, medicinal stuff (alternative or otherwise), car batteries and other vehicular maintenance what-have-you’s, sports apparel, and a myriad of poultry feeds. And yeah, add in the 15-second plug enumerating the major sponsors.
To simplify the math, those who or more less ran for 15 seconds (including 20-seconders) would count as 15-seconders, while those who are a bit over 30 seconds would just be 30 seconds flat (the Purefoods Chunkee Corned Beef TV ad with Kris Aquino actually ran for about 33 seconds).
That’s a lot of leeway already considering the fact that some of them ran two to three seconds more. All in all, there was one one-minuter, nine 30-seconders, and the rest were 15-seconders.
So, that makes nine minutes, right? Literally, the commercial gaps were even longer than a round of boxing (and they do the breaks between the rounds). That would be a drag to watch if that was real time. Besides, how could the boxers gain momentum if in-between round stops were that long?
Back during the Sugar Ray Leonard days, it wasn’t that bad. Out of boredom, my brother once counted the number of advertisements in a gap. It averaged between eight and nine. It sure does pale in comparison with the nine-minute breaks we currently have. You didn’t need the patience (and it also didn’t take that long) of a snail trying to traverse ten feet to watch a boxing main event.
