ABSTRACT
The evolution of American television and the changing nature of its audience have followed a pattern typical of the various media in societies as they move from a preindustrial phase, when the population is characterized by a low rate of literacy and small audiences that are comparatively well-educated and wealthy in relation to the vast majority of others (an “elite” audience, to use the label of the research literature), to the postindustrial climate often labeled “the information age,” when technology is advanced and the population is comparatively well-off and well educated, with enough disposable income to pay for the use of multiple media outlets. The newspaper in colonial America, for example, was written for small numbers of educated people and generally served political or commercial purposes. True mass media were not possible before the Industrial Revolution. The American newspaper of the mid-nineteenth century came about as the result of greater literacy, but owed just as much to the railroads that transported newsprint across the continent, high-speed presses that were capable of circulations in the tens, then hundreds of thousands, and an advertising and circulation base that conferred economic viability on the entire enterprise. In this phase of newspaper development, the goal for publishers was clear: increase readership, sell more papers, and print news and information with the broadest appeal. From the mid-nineteenth century to the 1960s, that was more or less the formula for success for most newspapers and magazines.
