I was annoyed by the OP's observations as well. I've converted my program to many different Python game/media APIs to observe the differences.
Pygame = chew up the most CPU resources Pyglet = chews up 28% to 42% CPU (surprised that the low CPU use was on old PowerPC G4 processors and the new latest Intel Core 2 Duo was chewing up 42% on the same program/codebase) Pyglet + Rabbyt = only 6%-8% CPU depending on old PowerPC G4, Intel Celeron M, Intel Core 2 Duo, does not matter what the CPU, and *the clear winner* for my use =) Pyglet and Rabbyt both are available for Mac OS X in their latest versions, which is another reason I'm leaning heavily towards that solution. Pygame just has been sorely lacking in the OS X installation binaries department and I don't want to send users through installing a DVD worth of developer tools and compiling their own Pygame and dependencies just so they can play my game. Cheers, PN
