The popular culture economy

Popular culture is market-based rather than aesthetic based. In other words, it is the culture that is most "popular" in an economic sense; i.e., what TV programs receive the most viewers, radio the most listeners, recordings the most buyers, and movies the most ticket-buyers. Although the study of popular culture encompasses a wide variety of issues-from clothing to popular activities to material culture-it is rooted in entertainment. While some popular culture entertainment may be viewed as "art" or even elitist, the bulk of popular culture involves the transmission of mass culture through entertainment from producers to consumers.

It is difficult to "measure" the popular culture economy because it is so nebulous (including so many intangibles) but it is possible to gather facts and figures from the U.S. Department of Commerce to determine economic impact.

The media are carriers of popular culture; therefore, because the entertainment industry is supported by and large through advertising dollars, let us first look at advertising expenditures from various media. This can give us a sense of history in popular culture as we can see where advertisers place their media buys and, by inference, see where the audiences are and the perceived influence and effectiveness of each media. We can begin this examination in 1948 through figures obtained from the Television Bureau of Advertising and compare media for 50 years, seeing some overall trends as well as total monies spent on advertising.

In 1948, the first full year of network programming on television, there was less than a million dollars spent on TV while radio received $562 million in estimated advertising revenue. Newspapers received $1.745 billion and magazines $477 million in estimated advertising revenue. This means that in 1948 there was $2.784 billion dollars spent in advertising dollars; TV received 0 percent, radio received 20 percent, magazines received 17 percent and newspapers received 62.7 percent. In 1994 a total of $88.236 billion dollars was spent; TV received 40 percent, radio received about 12 percent, magazines received about 9 percent, and newspapers about 39 percent (see Table 1).

What becomes apparent form looking at these figures (and further studies that break down advertising into national, local and network categories) is that TV is primarily a national medium while radio is primarily local....