At the start of the 1920s, the availability of technology such as the radio was dependant on meeting the ‘necessary conditions’ model making it viable as a consumer product. The three parts of the ‘necessary conditions’ model (in this case, for the radio) are: Technology, and the affordability of radio sets; Demographics, having reduced costs experiences a boost to profitability of American media; Law and regulation. In the UK, the BBC was able to keep a monopoly on broadcasting rights up until the 1970s (resulting in pirate radio, most notably depicted for my generation, in the fun-time film “The Boat that Rocked.” and who says I’m not familiar with popular culture).
It is interesting to note the different paths that radio took in the UK and USA. Since the BBC had such a death grip over the airwaves of Britain, and since the BBC only dealt with “up market” content (wouldn’t want one to sully oneself now would we?) the newspapers were left alone with the popular agenda. This meant that there was no competition between the two forms of media. In the States however, there was no such monopoly as the BBC and as a result the radio was much more commercial. This resulted in the two medias competing with each other and since radio is much cheaper to set up and produce than the press, American newspapers were (for all intents and purposes) killed off by the 1950s/60s.Obviously the biggest factor in the demise of the newspaper industry was the lack of advertising in favour of the radio. Britain had no such problem (refer to BBC death-grip mentioned above).
The 1950s Keynesian based economy of Britain was currently embroiled in paying off the nation’s war debt. According to Keynesian economics it’s better to pay people to dig holes and fill them back in, as opposed to them being unemployed. At this time, there were plenty of ‘holes’ to be filled. Southampton for example.
The vast amount of government spending taking place during the post war period, resulted in a massive consumer society. Everyone was busy spending all their money, and advertisers were doing their darndest to get that money for themselves, TV being more popular than newspapers, the advertisers moved to the more fertile grounds. The money advertisers gave to commercial stations resulted in a rise of pop. Programmes such as Sit-Coms, sport, and Soap Operas. Advertisements fuelled popular programming as well as essentially brainwashing the public into buying completely useless rubbish, depending on what you believe, on a completely separate note, my purple hair dye worked really well… something else that advertisers do is follow the majority. The ‘baby boomers’ of the post war period being this majority. Whilst the Mirror trenchantly followed the parents of the boomers, the Sun (the TV paper) went after the boomers themselves and followed their particular wants at the time (for example as they’d all be in their 60s/70s, they might be more inclined towards news of health etc.). by the 1970s the Sun had essentially crushed the Mirror in circulation, and by the ‘90s, newspapers were dying, the same way they had in the USA. Here cometh the undeniable rise of the television as the most prominent media. And since America is now what popular media is based on. Anything popular is taken directly from America I.e. Rupert Murdoch.
Here endeth the (out of practice when it comes to blogging my notes) lesson.
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