Bang for Your Buck
Purely as a silly little exercise, I thought it would be interesting to compare the per hour price of a variety of media/entertainment sources for me. We often compare total costs, yet this strikes me as foolish, since not all media/entertainment fill the same amount of time, and thus I wanted to move things to a per hour price. Follow me beyond the fold …
This isn’t highly scientific, and ignores all sorts of important things (like hardware costs), but just for the heck of it, let’s play the game. When possible, I’ve estimated how many hours “one” of something is (so, for instance, movies in a theater are easy, but I guessed that an owned movie may be watched 3 times, with one hour of bonus material viewing. And yes, I am a slow novel reader, but not that slow with comics – I assumed a graphic novel would be read more than once). As for cable TV, I just go with average cable bill and guesstimate of my monthly viewing. Note that some have a “pp” next to them since these are activities that require each person to pay this amount.
Arranged from most expensive to least:
Opera (3 hours @ $100) = $33.33/hr (pp)
Play (3 hours @ $60) = $20/hr (pp)
MoMA (3 hours @ $20) = $6.67/hr (pp)
Magazine (1 hour @ $6) = $6/hr
Movie in a Cinema (2 hours @ $11) $5.50/hr (pp)
Graphic novel (5 hours @ $25) = $5/hr
Movie on DVD (7 hours @ $20) = $2.86/hr
TV series on DVD (18 hours @ $40) = $2.22/hr
Movie rental (2 hours @ $4) = $2/hr
CD (25 hours @ $15) = $1.66/hr
Videogame – normal (30 hours @ $40) = $1.33/hr
Novel (12 hours @ $15) = $1.25/hr
Newspaper (1 hour @ $1) = $1/hr
Videogame – GTA (90 hours @ $54) = $0.60/hr
Cable TV (105 hours / month @ $60) = $0.57/hr
Met Museum (5 hours @ $1) = $0.20/hr pp
Looked at this way, I see why I hardly ever go to plays ever more. In London, as a grad student, I could get student rush seats for about $10. I’d turn up half an hour before the show (and I lived near most theaters), pay up, and see great stuff for $3.33/h (cheaper than a graphic novel or movie in a cinema). But now, even paying the cheapo rate to sit in the nosebleeds, it’s $20/h; if I paid for better seats, it would climb to about $40/h.
The surprise at the top end was the magazine. I tend to think of them as cheap, but since I get no more than an hour out of most magazines, they’re actually quite a rip off: I could buy a (seemingly more expensive) season of TV on DVD for about a third of the per hour cost.
On the lower end, I distinguished between normal video games and GTA, since the latter can take more of my time, and I’ll happily play again when finished, or will play just to drive around and do odd missions. 90 hours may actually be a low estimate, but even at that, it’s a bargain. Seen in the store, it’s as expensive as a play, and way more expensive than many things on this list, but it’s considerably cheaper per hour, almost as good a deal as cable TV.
The Met’s the cheapest, but that’s because I’m a cheap bastard and pay $1. They look at me as though I’m a deviant, since their “recommended” price is way higher, but so what? Looked at here, I should go more often.
Of course, one needs to toggle such results for relative experience. An hour of great drama on stage may not equal an hour of newspaper reading. But this table provides a starting point, to see which way things need to climb. And by this metric, magazines only get worse, since there’s no way they entertain me more than most of the cheaper things on the list.
I’m also interested to see how most of these sources of entertainment are entirely within the same range. Which makes me wonder if the industries ever engage in similar cost-effectiveness / bang-for-the-buck analysis? Meanwhile, for me, it’s clear that Liberty City costs less than its real life counterpart, so I guess I’m staying home today.
Some other factors you don’t bring up is the cost to get to these entertainments – transportation, babysitting (if you had kids), time to arrange, etc. Domestic media have far lower logistics & extras associated with them, making them even more efficient.
Magazines & video/game rentals can be even cheaper with subscriptions/membership, but that potentially reduces immediacy of choice as well. That should be another variable – flexibility & choice of entertainments. Bottom line – it’s all too complicated, so just turn on the TV…
Also, monthly comic books should have a separate place on this list, separate from graphic novels. I’m assuming you’re talking about trade paperbacks, and not making some high art distinction there, but distribution format matters (as you show with theatrical vs. DVD movies). You’re lucky if you get 20 minutes out of a single issue, at and $4+ a pop these days, that’s $12 an hour.
Take that MOMA! Pow! Zap!
agreed – I didn’t factor in babysitting, taxis, etc. (mind you, I also didn’t include HDTV costs and electricity bills for added luminescence). But, yes, turn on the TV and/or play GTA: a simple moral to an otherwise complicated tale
Derek, I haven’t read monthly comics for a long time, hence not including. No dist. diss. intended. But some would have us believe that they can be sold at great prices later in life, so maybe some retrieval costs could be factored in there, whereas I don’t think anyone will pay me for the old MoMA or theater tickets I have in a shoebox (and on the cover of Fandom for backup)
Another important note for those of us who are one half of a couple: your point that many of these on the list are cost per person, whereas television viewing, home movie rental, etc., sees the cost per hour drop dramatically as you multiply the participants. Of course, video games can depend on whether they are multi-player or single-player, but this makes TV on DVD, home DVD viewing, DVD rental, cable TV, and some video games even more affordable, vis-a-vis seeing a movie in the theater, etc.
very true, Sam. My first draft actually accounted for pp costs, but it got too complicated and variable. So, anything without a “pp” is likely much cheaper in reality, especially since they’re the same ones that require transport, childcare, etc. for many. Granted, many of them also require hardware, but that initial investment is usually quite small, even if factored into the cost