When I started in advertising a long, long lunch ago the 30 second spot was still a relatively novel idea. We’d tried all kinds of lengths within the body of a program but eventually settled on 30 seconds. It seemed long enough to tell a story, short enough not to annoy the viewer too much.

So when I hear of its demise it’s like hearing of the passing of an old friend. (That happens quite a bit when you get to my age.)

Still, you have to move with the times, I guess.

Occurs to me, though, that when you look at the history of how most folks like to be entertained, it has always been a fairly passive experience. From court jesters telling jokes to storytellers round a campfire, we listen or stare fairly submissively, with perhaps only the occasional interactive moment in the form of a rotten tomato.

When you realize that most live events, theater for instance, remain one way performances - from stage to audience - it’s obvious that not everyone wants to be a participant. Some people just like to watch. Especially if the entertainment is actually entertaining.

As it is with life, so it is with the web. Even as TV, print, you name it, merge onto one device – or one protocol - we may still want to come home after a few too many martinis and simply veg out in front of that device.

That’s not to say that the internet doesn’t create new ways to interact: clearly it does. But within the area of entertainment that’s less participatory, there will undoubtedly be room for commercial messages that are traditional in form if not in media.

The maximum time we can ask of any viewer to spend with those newfangled commercial messages? Why about 30 seconds, I’d guess.

Yours, quaffing a gibson,
Buddy Mackeson
Chairman Emeritus (Fictional),
The Brooklyn Brothers