Unit 5: Media and The Arts

The Media and the Arts in Great Britain and in the United States. TV
and radio in the United Kingdom. Rock music in the UK. Liverpool
and The Beatles. Folk Music in Scotland. Entertainment. Social
Media. Culture, leisure and entertainment in the USA. The Theatre
District in New York. Central Park. Elvis Presley. Vocabulary related
to Entertainment and the Arts. Media and Advertising. News Events.
Cinema and Theatre. Music and Literature. Newspapers. Television.
The Press and Social Media.

The media in Great Britain

As in many other European countries, Britain’s main newspapers and main TV channels are
both in long-term decline; fewer and fewer people are reading the former or watching the
latter. In the last quarter of the twentieth century, people became richer, so that they were
able to pursue alternative forms of leisure activity. In addition, cheaper means of production
and distribution meant that the main papers and the main channels found themselves with
more rivas.More recently, there is the internet, which gives people not only a further form of
leisure activity but also an alterntive source for news. Nevertheless, the main papers and
channels remain a cental part of everydqay national life.

The importance of the national press

Newspaper publication in the country is dominated by the national press – an indication of the
comparative weakness of regional identity in the country. There are more than seventy local
and regional daily papers, but the total circulation of all of them together is less than the
combined circulation of the handful of national ‘dailies’. The only non-national papers with
circulations are published in the evenings, when they do not compete with the national
papers, which always appear in the mornings. The only exception to this pattern is in Scotland-
only papers sell more copies than most of