The Making of American Audiences: From Stage to Television, 1750-1990

Cambridge Studies in the History of Mass Communication

by Richard Butsch

In The Making of American Audiences, Richard Butsch provides a comprehensive survey of American entertainment audiences from the Colonial period to the present. Providing coverage of theater, opera, vaudeville, minstrelsy, movies, radio and television, he examines the evolution of audience practices as each genre supplanted another as the primary popular entertainment. Based on original historical research, this volume exposes how audiences made themselves through their practices--how they asserted control over their own entertainments and their own behavior.

438 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2000