WHO’S WASTING MONEY?
To keep religion in perspective, I sometimes like to look at secular phenomena. According to A. C. Nielson, it costs the following to buy a minute of TV commercial time: Superbowl $1,000,000; All- Star baseball game, $485,000; Monday night football, $327,000; Kentucky Derby, $315,400. Well, those are big events, so they would be expected to eclipse per minute a generous church budget for a year. So let’s look at things few look at. World Cup Soccer Marathon is not a big sacred draw, yet it costs $51,400 for a minute of time. And there’s only one thing more boring than painting heirlooms on a Saturday night, and that’s pro bowling. Commercial time per minute; $42,000. When people tell me that serious American religion should drop other things and go prime time, I think of what the money for a minute of drab pro bowling time would do to feed the hungry. Martin Marty in Context, quoting stats from Media and Values.
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