How has mass media technology changed the way audiences are entertained?

Nobody could have foreseen the mass production of entertainment at the caliber that it holds today. Entertainment far predates its modern eminence as a mass media enterprise. People since the beginning of time have been enjoying both music and story telling. However, media technology has changed the way that audiences are entertained. Before media technology, people were the entertainers, they were the ones who would come up with the stories and music to entertain both themselves and the small communities around them. Now however, people are consumers of entertainment. Instead of originating their own entertainment, people turn into mass outlets, like the radio and television, to provide entertainment. People use mass media technology to generate entertainment wherever and whenever they want. Mass media technology, starting with the printing press, has allowed for a large audience to receive entertainment at any given time. Mass media has affected the way audiences are entertained but also the performance. A stage product that is turned into a television series must duplicate an adaptation of the story through cameras. It is clearly evident that “people are being entertained more than ever before in history” (Vivian, 242). Some critics believe that the mass media technology has led to the spreading of low brow entertainment, which says to have no real “artistic value”, while others argue that the entertainment is just as evocative and social unifying as it has ever been. Nonetheless it is easy to see that mass media technology has changed the way audiences are entertained because they are now the consumers instead of the producers.