There is a mass market. It comes together for sports. It surges for the SuperBowl.
BUSINESS INSIDER reports that, on the average, 30-second spots sold for SuperBowl 2012 @$3.5 million each, which was up from last year. When Don Draper of "Mad Men" was writing the ads for it - that was the first SuperBowl in 1967 - air time had cost $40,000.
But the mass market is shrinking for the President's State of the Union, where the drama is predictable. The camera tracks the big political names coming in, listening, and beaming or frowning, depending on their party affiliation. According to Nielsen, reports "Media Decoder" in THE NEW YORK TIMES, the audience for this year's address was about 37.8 million, down from 42.8 million last year, and 52.3 million the year before.
In addition to stale performance art, the State of the Union in this presidential campaign year carried too much sales baggage. Watching it was much like sitting through an infomercial.
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