ABSTRACT
Entertainment follows a general set of criteria that, although largely taken for granted by everyone, can be identified by contrasting it to the mundane or routine. In contrasting entertainment with the mundane, the most obvious difference is the absence of the ordinary in entertainment. Following Georg Simmel’s ideas, entertainment would qualify as an “adventure.” In general terms this means that entertainment is outside the expected boundaries of continuous routine behavior. Enjoyment, or satisfaction, is not merely a measure of the quality of entertainment, it is a test of whether the activity was indeed entertainment. Another feature of the grammar of entertainment television, one that illustrates both inflection and specialized vocabulary, is the nonverbal dimension of interpersonal interaction through television. One of the more telling consequences of television over the past several decades is the emergence of the media, or more accurately, the television personality.
