In one measure of news interest, campaign stories have consumed 95 minutes of attention this year through Feb. 27 on the ABC, CBS and NBC evening newscasts. That's more time than in the comparable periods for the previous four presidential election cycles combined, according to the Tyndall Report.

Presidential politics was so far off the radar in January and February 1991 that the three newscasts together spent less than a minute on the upcoming campaign.

The study doesn't even take into account time chewed up by the cable TV networks, with their gaping 24-hour news holes. CNN was around in 1991, but Fox News Channel and MSNBC didn't exist. Neither did "The Daily Show" with
Jon Stewart.

"It used to be that campaigning was the interval between governing," said Bob Schieffer, host of CBS' "Face the Nation." "Now governing is the interval between campaigning."