When Alvin Toffler wrote in The Third Wave back in 1979 that as communications technologies improve, the days of mass media will start to wane. The rise of 60+ channel analog cable TV, 100+ channel digital cable TV, 150+ channel small-dish satellite TV, 80+ channel satellite radio, the public Internet, and lower cost printing has done much seriously erode the influence of the mass media. The breaking of the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal in 1998 and the Rathergate scandal in 2004 over the Internet is the penultimate proof of how modern communications technologies are frequently outrunning the mainstream media.
then the national pastime becomes escaping the all-seeing eye with ever more clever means, bribes, and charades.