Halcyon Days of Broadcast Ad Model Fade by Christopher Locke: "Mass media are "mass" because they have for so long served the core requirement of mass production: to move excess inventory. The more product such advertising could move, the more profit the company made, so obviously, the bigger the audience the better. Mass media are mass because they're huge. And the way such hugeness is achieved is by appealing to lowest-common-denominator tastes in terms of programming content. The content is merely bait to entice the audience. The real show, the real message, is the advertising. Therefore advertisers want to lower the common denominator so that they can get everyone possible into the audience." [via personalization newswire]