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Klappentext This is a comprehensive survey of American entertainment audiences from the colonial period to the modern day. Zusammenfassung Richard Butsch provides a comprehensive survey of American entertainment audiences from the colonial period to the modern day. Providing coverage of theatre! opera! vaudeville! minstrelsy! movies! radio and television! he examines the evolution of audience practices as each genre supplanted another as the primary popular entertainment. Inhaltsverzeichnis Acknowledgements; Introduction: participative public, passive private?; 1. Colonial theater, privileged audiences; 2. Drama in early Republican audiences; 3. The B'hoys in Jacksonian theaters; 4. Knowledge and the decline of audience sovereignty; 5. Matinee ladies: re-gendering theater audiences; 6. Blackface, whiteface; 7. Variety, liquor and lust; 8. Vaudeville, incorporated; 9. 'Legitimate' and 'illegitimate' theater around the turn of the century; 10. The celluloid stage: Nickelodeon audiences; 11. Storefronts to theaters: seeking the middle class; 12. Voices from the ether: early radio listening; 13. Radio cabinets and network chains; 14. Rural radio: 'we are seldom lonely anymore'; 15. Fears and dreams: public discourses about radio; 16. The electronic cyclops: fifties television; 17. A TV in every home: television 'effects'; 18. Home video: viewer autonomy?; 19. Conclusion: from effects to resistance and beyond; Appendix: availability, affordability, admission price; Notes; Selected bibliography; Index.
