ABSTRACT
Most people alive today (at least in the industrialized countries, if not quite universally) have spent a good deal of the waking, nonworking hours—that is to say, their leisure time—receiving mediated communications messages. I refer not only to the so-called “television generation” (Le., roughly those born post-World War II) but also to the current middle-aged and elderly generations. The growth of available leisure time in the twentieth century was matched by a rapid growth in literacy and education and a more ready availability of printed matter, not to mention the later technological marvels of radio, motion pictures, and then television. In ever-increasing numbers—and apparently also for increasing proportions of the daily hours—people read, listened, watched, sometimes all at once.
