WORLD CUP FULL IN U.S. BUT DOESN’T RUNNETH OVER

Although U.S. ratings for the World Cup telecasts on ABC, ESPN and Univision are up 75 percent over the 2006 games, the non-stop nature of the sport will prevent it from ever achieving the popularity here as it has elsewhere in the world, a sports broadcasting expert has told the Los Angeles Times. Thus far, the first eight matches have averaged 3.1 million viewers, a record for soccer but well below the figure for popular sports like baseball, basketball, and American football. Lisa M. Burns, an associate professor of media studies at Quinnipiac University in Connecticut, told the Times that soccer’s biggest problem is that “it isn’t TV friendly.” She noted that U.S. sports all have timeouts, some of which have been modified to accommodate TV commercials. “This keeps the major broadcast networks and advertisers from investing in [soccer telecasts],” she said.