During a speech a couple of weeks ago, I characterized the crawl on the bottom of CNN as “news delivered at 4 mph.” I made up the speed, but it seemed like a reasonable approximation, since it seems to go at about walking speed.

This morning I was watching a news channel on the little TV in our bedroom: It took about four seconds to go across a screen about 15″ wide. If I were watching it on, say, a 60″ wide TV, it would have taken four seconds to cover four times the distance and thus would be traveling four times as fast. If it were a 4 mile wide screen, it’d be travelling at a mile per second.

So, how fast does a news crawl (if a news crawl could crawl news)? And why doesn’t it look faster on a big set?

I know it’s so elementary that it’s embarrassing, but I’m sick, ok? Slightly feverish. Really. [Tags: doep puzzle]

Categories: Uncategorized dw