A typical broadcast is nearly 3 hours. 11 minutes of action, what else is going on? Well, over an hour of commercials helps. 67 minutes of players just standing around and preparing for the snap, and 17 minutes of replays. That's what.
Oh...and before you get all feminista on me...no, cheerleaders are not a big part of the telecase. In fact, half the games studied didn't show cheerleaders at all. Not once. The rest....averaged 3 seconds on camera. Usually as they go to commercial on time. So calm down.
It really is wait, wait, wait, 4 second play, wait, wait, wait, 4 second play. That sort of thing.