Andrew Milligan/PA Wire
Time's TV critic James Poniewozik ponders this question (I shared the Susan Boyle clip over at Sundance Channel). He writes that the spread both online and in "replays on talk shows, news shows, and on and on" of dowdy Susan Boyle's appearance on Britain's Got Talent eclipses a behemoth such as the Super Bowl audience and suggests that "the growing Boyle phenomenon...shows that mass-media experiences still exist in the fragmented-media era—they're just different."
The 30 second sound bite has now been replaced by a 30 second video moment that "tell a story in a short time [with] a character, conflict, triumph and resolution in scant minutes."
[Via]