The rise of entertainment

Abstract

Before the advent of the modern newspaper industry in the nineteenth century, theatrical live entertainment was almost the only mass medium, reaching large numbers of people instantly, and at the same time. Many people in the Western world were still not able to read. So great was deemed the power of the spoken word on stage, that most governments highly regulated and restricted theatre building and theatre performances. Towards the end of the eighteenth century, with a general trend towards more democratic forms of government and more representation of the various groups of population in government, governments throughout the Western world started to deregulate the theatre. The first to do so were the former British colonies in North America, just after they had formed the United States. Second was Britain, which finally disposed of its infamous theatre patents in the 1840s. Third was France, which despite a brief spell of liberalisation after the Revolution, waited until the 1860s before it liberalised the industry. These deregulations had far-reaching consequences. They enabled a strong expansion of entertainment production, inaugurating the start of a never-ending growth phase lasting into the twenty-first century. The organisation and technology of theatrical production moulded entertainment into a large-scale, integrated, highly industrialised and standardised business with complex production and distribution systems. On the demand side, the deregulation freed a pool of repressed, under-served demand for theatre, and created further demand for new forms of live entertainment.