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MTV Top Secret Study Leaked

NEW YORK -- A top secret study commissioned by MTV Networks to investigate and explain shifting viewership patterns is causing wide-spread alarm in the health, entertainment, insurance and legal industries, particularly with regards to a heretofore undiscovered causal link between boredom and mortality rates. The data suggest that there is a direct correlation between boredom and at least a 32% increase in life expectancy.

Among MTV's core 12-34 demographic viewership has fallen 11%. During the same period, prime-time viewership decreased 3 percent in that age group and viewing for young men is down 7 percent since last fall. People in this age group do a little more than one-quarter of their TV-watching during traditional prime time, down 10 percent in four years, Nielsen said.

"We are always trying to understand our audience and their preferences. It's just good business practice," said Betsy Frank, Chief Researcher for MTV Networks. "I thought there might be more videogame playing during the earlier hours or fewer shows on between 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. that they want to want, but the reality is our audience is just going belly up much more quickly than anyone realized."

The study identified activities generally identified by youths as being boring, such as baseball, politics, news, and golf, and then found that when compared to Rock Music, not only do participants in those activities have substantially longer lives, fans of those activities live longer as well. Ted Williams lived to 84; Senator Robert Byrd to 87; Walter Cronkite to 88 and Byron Nelson to 92. In contrast, Buddy Holly, Jimi Hendrix, James Dean, Kurt Cobain and Janis Joplin all died before they were 30. Over one hundred elderly football fan deaths were reported as a direct result of Janet Jackson's Superbowl XXXVIII half-time show.

"I suppose it is the classic 'quantity versus quality' argument," said Dr. Gunther Uberflassen, Mudcat Falls Community College Adjunct Professor of Psychology, who has reviewed the study and devised his own an empirical measurement of boredom. "But then again advertisers cannot sell to dead people."

MTV, a division of Viacom, has announced no schedule changes to include more sedentary programming to retain and grow a larger audience share. While insurance companies consider preferred rates based on the so-called Uberflassen Amusement Threshold Scale, the nation's trial lawyers are struggling to understanding the legal implications of the study.

"I mean, who do we sue first? MSNBC, C-SPAN and Major League Baseball for the willful infliction of mental anguish," lamented local attorney Steve Dallas, "Or MTV and the producers of Jackass for wrongful death?"



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