Lecture Entertainment in the US

Oussema Othmeni English Department Faculty of Arts and Humanities-Sousse The Entertainment Industry in the U.S. I. Introduction Over the course of the 20th century, the average American witnessed a 33% decrease in working hours and acquired a significant income increase. This resulted in increasing consumerism and nearly tripling expenditures on entertainment. Moreover, the time needed to accomplish household chores significantly decreased due to the impact of technological advancement, and accessing means of entertainment at home was facilitated through radio, television, and recorded music. This resulted in the consumption of entertainment on a mass scale and the maintenance of such consumption through continuous growth and innovation. This lecture seeks to deal with popular American entertainment that is accessible to, and appreciated by, the masses. It examines mainly five forms of entertainment: vaudeville, recorded sound, movies, television, and subscription video on demand (SVOD). It pays special attention to television entertainment and sheds a light on the rise of subscription video as an integral element of the Media and Entertainment (M&E) industry. II. Media and Entertainment in the U.S. Today, the U.S. Media and Entertainment industry is the largest in the world. It is worth $717 billion and it constitutes a third of the global M&E industry. It includes motion pictures, television programs and commercials, streaming content, music and audio recordings, broadcast, radio, book publishing, video games, and other services and products. The U.S. M&E industry is expected to reach more than $825 billion by 2023. This section provides an overview of some of the most popular forms of entertainment in the United States of America throughout and beyond the 20th century. The following elements are presented in an evolutionary manner: A. Vaudeville The first medium of mass entertainment in the 20th century was vaudeville. Before technological advancement made entertainment a packaged commodity, live entertainment defined the industry. Staged shows like theater, opera, symphony, and vaudeville were the dominant forms of entertainment. While the first few appealed to well-educated and upper-class Americans, vaudeville attracted and entertained a mass audience. Vaudeville can be defined as a live variety show. It contained acting and music. It was broadly like a talent show seeing that it contained a little bit of everything. Vaudeville resorted to any type of performance that can entertain an audience. It flourished in America for the first two decades of the 20th century and showcased many actors who later went on to shape the movie and television industries. Vaudeville was performed live and was not formal nor exclusive. It appealed to the masses and contained a variety of acts that included the stars of opera and Page 1/4 Oussema Othmeni English Department Faculty of Arts and Humanities-Sousse Broadway, acrobats, and circus performers. Typically, vaudeville shows lasted two hours on average and granted entrance for lower prices compared to more formal shows. It peaked in the 1920s and started fading with the rise of movies, radio, and television. Some of the most famous vaudeville performers, such as Jack Benny, George Burns, and the Marx Brothers succeeded in joining and shaping the electronic entertainment media that would follow. B. Recorded Sound In the earliest releases of recorded sound, the novelty of the technology was enough to attract an audience and sell any recording. This was reflected in the nature of recordings that were available on the market: from comical songs and monologues to marching songs and hymns. However, the promotion of recordings to the public has ever since evolved into a massive entertainment industry. This industry advanced primarily on two major levels during and beyond the 20th century: art and technology. Artistically speaking, the styles of popular music have changed and diversified ranging from classical music to jazz and from rock to rap, to name but a few genres. The technological innovations that impacted the recorded sound industry are equally important. For instance, phonographs and music boxes quickly lost their position to radios, audiocassettes, and the Walkman, which in turn were marginalized by CD players, MP3 players, and other technological advancements. The industry now centers on computers and Artificial Intelligence seeing that digital sound came to the forefront of the music industry. The recorded sound industry remains one of the most important elements of media and entertainment in the U.S. In the first half of 2020, U.S. recorded music revenues increased by 5.6% to reach $5.7 billion of value. This growth is a continuation of the positive trends of recent years. Moreover, streaming music revenues grew by 5.1% to reach $3.7 billion. It is also important to note that Podcasts continue to grow rapidly in the U.S with more and more listeners each year and are therefore becoming a significant medium of entertainment. Today, the Joe Rogan Experience podcast earns approximately $30 million annually. With more than 104 million people listening to podcasts in the US monthly, Podcasting is estimated to become a leading sector of entertainment by 2028 as a $95 billion industry. C. Filmed Entertainment: Movies & Television The U.S. filmed entertainment industry includes films, movie theaters, TV subscriptions, and home video production. It is considered a leading industry in the M&E market. In fact, most Americans prefer to watch movies and TV over listening to music, playing video games, or resorting to other forms of entertainment. According to NPD, a leading market research group, 27% of all entertainment hours in 2018 were spent on watching TV and movies, followed by 19% listening to music and 16% playing video games. Box office receipts reached $11.3 billion in 2019 while the broadcasting industry generated a total revenue of $168 billion dollars in the same year according to Statista. These numbers reflect the central position of movies and television as primary means of entertainment in the U.S. Page 2/4 Oussema Othmeni English Department Faculty of Arts and Humanities-Sousse The film industry evolved into a multibillion-dollar entertainment industry over the course of the 20th century. In the process, it embedded itself into the culture and fabric of American life. It shaped the conception of Americanness and became one of its defining elements. Technology changed the movie industry, and the movie industry changed American culture. It survived the Great Depression, two world wars, and the technological revolutions of sound, color, television, and the computer. Each has only served to strengthen the industry rather than diminish it. Similarly, television succeeded in entertaining and enthralling Americans of all ages. It significantly shaped the lives of American citizens as it permanently and radically changed the nature of leisure. It is undeniable that TV left a unique mark on American society whether through influencing the outcome of elections, bringing the horror of catastrophe into the audience’s living rooms, entertaining viewers with talk shows, or advertising and marketing products on a massive scale. Television changed the concept of entertainment and increased its availability. Never before have Americans been exposed to so much entertainment, available so many hours per day, and at such a low cost, as they have been by the evolution of television. III. TV Programming and Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) A. TV Programming The movie and television industries are mutually dependent. The movie industry supplies talent and facilities that are necessary to produce television shows, and television serves as an important auxiliary market for the movie industry. Movies are shown on television as pay perview, pay cable, cable, and network broadcasts at various times in the lifecycle of a film. However, television programming provides a variety of other options: there are various series produced for television, like Friends, The Office, Game of Thrones, and Breaking Bad. There are news programs like Entertainment Tonight and Good Morning America, which are essentially live broadcasts. TV also offers talk shows, most notably The Ellen DeGeneres Show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Real Time with Bill Maher, and Dr. Phil. There are also live sports shows like SportsCenter, Skip and Shannon: Undisputed, and First Take. A variety of other programs that range from talent shows to reality TV are offered to viewers on a continuous basis. Besides the initial broadcast of each of these shows, there are the rebroadcasts and reruns as well as adaptations. In addition, major networks have nightly national newscasts, and hundreds of local stations have numerous daily and nightly local newscasts as well as morning shows. The variety in TV programming reflects the diversity of TV networks. In 2017, there were 1,761 commercial television stations on the air in the United States. In 2020, the leading ad supported network in the U.S was CBS, with 5.6 million average viewers throughout the year. NBC, ABC, and Fox ranked in second, third, and fourth with respectively 5, 4.5, and 4.1 million viewers. But with the rapid expansion of streaming video on demand (SVOD), television subscriptions are expected to experience a slight decline. Page 3/4 Oussema Othmeni English Department Faculty of Arts and Humanities-Sousse B. Subscription Video on Demand (SVOD) Subscription video on demand (SVOD) is a model of entertainment where users pay a monthly fee in exchange for access to a streaming library that consists of movies, TV shows, and other media and digital content. SVOD is popular with media consumers of all ages and is generating billions of dollars in revenue in the U.S. Major services include Sky, Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, and other services provided by Apple, HBO, and Disney. SVOD allows consumers the freedom of opting out whenever they want and offers greater flexibility to users especially that providers are constantly challenged with retaining consumers by providing exclusive and original content as well as competitive pricing schemes. Netflix established itself as the SVOD market leader both in the United States and abroad. The streaming service has 75 million North American subscribers and 222 million subscribers in total. However, the emergence of Disney+ into the North American SVOD scene disrupted Netflix’s growth. The Walt Disney Company also owns services like Hulu and ESPN+ which allowed Disney to become a serious competitor in the SVOD industry. With the arrival of Apple TV Plus, HBO Max, Paramount+, and Discovery+, the SVOD entertainment market will continue to grow. According to Statista, the SVOD market in the U.S accumulated $25.3 billion in revenue in 2021, 20% percent higher than the previous year. This means that traditional providers are witnessing a decrease in subscription numbers as SVOD services are becoming more and more popular among U.S. consumers. IV. Conclusion As distribution channels shift to digital, the M&E industry is shifting away from telecommunications and towards modern technology. The Internet and the rise of digital content rendered entertainment a commodity that is constantly available in all forms and shapes through computers, smartphones, tablets, etc. COVID-19 has accelerated such structural changes in media and entertainment as further innovation appears to be on the horizon. Sources: Haupert, Michael J. Entertainment Industry (Emerging Industries in the United States, 1539-7289). Greenwood Publishing Group, 2006. Insider Intelligence. “Podcast Industry Report: Market Growth and Advertising Statistics in 2022.” Insider Intelligence. Accessed February 13, 2022. https://www.insiderintelligence.com/insights/the-podcast-industry-report-statistics/. “2020 Mid-Year Music Industry Revenue Report: RIAA.” RIAA. Accessed February 13, 2022. https://www.riaa.com/reports/2020-mid-year-music-industry-revenue-report-riaa “Watching Movies and TV Topped US Entertainment Options in 2018, the NPD Group Says.” The NPD Group, November 30, 2021. https://www.npd.com/news/press-releases/2019/watching-movies-and-tv-topped-us-entertainment-options-in-2018the-npd-group-says/. Page 4/4