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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 July 2009
What the mass media offer is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.
W. H. AudenAs an addition to the longitudinal analysis of entertainment consumption, this chapter examines the structure of household expenditure at the cross-section for benchmark years to get insight into the structure of demand, the differences between countries and expenditure items, and the way in which these affected the industrialisation of entertainment. This exercise is worthwhile because it throws light on the demand side of the industrialisation, it may help us to understand the consumer side of the quality race discussed in Chapter 6, it sketches the context in which to place the discussions of film consumption and film market research in Chapters 8 and 10, and it helps us to understand in more qualitative terms the background of the counterfactual exercise to calculate social savings and productivity growth in Chapter 11.
The rest of this chapter proceeds as follows: first, household entertainment consumption before cinema will be analysed for the benchmark year 1889/90, making use of a remarkable international survey. Then, using a unique data-set on Boston spectator entertainment and capacities, the structure of demand and its price elasticity will be examined at the cross-section level for 1909, a few years after the industry's take-off, a time when the number of cinemas was growing rapidly. The subsequent section will examine household expenditure after cinema for benchmark years between 1936 and 1938.
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