Today is
Friday, May 9, 2008.
[- Letters -]
Anyone writing a letter to the New York Times has one chance in twenty-one of having the letter published. Letter writers to the Washington Post do significantly better one letter out of eight finds its way into print.[- Newspaper -]
The average person in America spends fifty-two minutes each day reading the newspaper. This means that in a seventy year lifetime (subtracting the first fifteen years as nonnewspaper reading time), the typical person spends a little less than two years, about 687 days of his or her life reading the paper.[- Radio -]
In every hour that one listens to the radio in America, one hears approximately 11,000 spoken words.[- Solicitation -]
It is estimated that 4 million "junk" telephone calls, phone solicitations by persons or programmed machines, are made every day in America.[- Telephones -]
According to the General Telephone Company of Pennsylvania, the typical American spends an average of 8,760 hours of his or her life speaking on the telephone every year.[- Telephones -]
According to the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, there are 24.5 telephone calls made for every 100 people in the entire world.[- Telephones -]
There are more telephones than people in Washington. D.C.[- Television -]
In 1948 Milton Berle's budget for the "Texaco Star Theater," the most popular one-hour show on television, was $15,000 for the entire hour. Today, this is far less than the cost of a one-minute television commercial.[- Television -]
According to the Television Code of Decency, a beer advertisement can never show a person actually drinking beer. Next time you see such an advertisement on television, notice that while the beer itself is prominently displayed, the subject always stops short of drinking it.[- Television -]
On June 1, 1946, there were only 10,000 television sets in the United States. Five years later, there were 12 million.[- Television -]
According to the Federal Trade Commission, there are 20,000 television commercials made each year that are aimed exclusively at children. Of these, 7,000 are for sugared breakfast cereals.[- Television -]
In the 70's more people with an income below $3,000 a year owned television sets in the United States than those with an income above $10,000.
