Courtesy the Wall Street Journal

(October 29, 2010) Before settling in Sunday for your 10-hour NFL binge, there's a pretty good chance you'll watch the hour-long pregame shows. There's also a pretty good chance you'll notice something slightly odd about their hosts: They never stop laughing.

Well, that's not entirely true, but an analysis of the CBS and Fox pregame shows before Week 5 shows that the hosts do spend a lengthy amount of time laughing—sometimes at nothing, sometimes at their own jokes and, occasionally, at things that are funny.

The amount of time they laugh, though, is what sets them apart. The five hosts on Fox's show—Curt Menefee, Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Michael Strahan and Jimmy Johnson—had a combined laughing time of two minutes, 22 seconds. That's about 11.6% of the 20 minutes, 27 seconds they were shown on set together. Mr. Bradshaw was easily the laughing leader, going for about 92.4 seconds—including 2.5 seconds at the start of the show before anyone said anything.

The CBS crew—Greg Gumbel, Dan Marino, Bill Cowher, Shannon Sharpe and Boomer Esiason—only laughed for 43 seconds. That's about one-third as much chuckling as the group at Fox. CBS declined to comment. Fox Sports spokesman Lou D'Ermilio says, "If we didn't tell the guys to stop they would laugh and crack jokes 100% of the time."

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