The Super Bowl may be the most watched TV event of the year, but in this multi-media age it's also the last gasp of old media.
Kelly McBride of the Poynter Institute's "Sense Making Project" says that while the Super Bowl continues to draw bigger and bigger TV audiences, it's just not the way people experience media anymore.
"Sporting events and breaking news events are the last bastion of live television. Nobody really watches anything in real time anymore because people can DVR things and they can watch it on the internet. This event, the Super Bowl, brings people together in a way that nothing else has the power to do in our culture."
It's estimated that 112 million people will tune into the Super Bowl. Advertisements in the game are selling for four million dollars for 30 seconds of air time.
And, while the Super Bowl is a great opportunity to sell stuff, McBride says that it's really old school selling in the digital age.
"They want to sell you stuff because it's the one opportunity they have to sell stuff to a lot of people. One of the things that's changed with this changing media environment is the ability to advertise. Advertising just doesn't work the same way it used to because you can't assemble that mass audience the way you used to. People turn away during the commercials most of the time. Advertisers can get to you in so many different ways -- through your social media stream or with direct advertising to you because you've left your cookies all over the place and they know what you are interested in. So, it's really the last gasp of the old way that media used to work and it really is the exception now rather than the rule.'
