Super Bowl Underscores the Big Business of Must-See, Live TV

[Commentary] It is a fact of modern life that the mass has gone out of media, with television ratings reflecting that each of us is building our own little campfire on our phone, tablet and big screen at a time and place of our choosing. Until a bonfire like the Super Bowl is lit. Then we all show up, generally in greater and greater numbers each year. And it’s not just for the biggest of all games. Live events -- including the NFL’s regular season, the Grammys, the Oscars and the Golden Globes -- have all managed to escape the broad loss of audience in network television. New-media types will posit that second screens fueled by social media have made live events seem all the more urgent, and while that’s true, I think something more primal is at work. At a time of atomization in which we all end up down the hobbit holes of our special interests, big live television fulfills a need to have something, anything, in common.