Get Me a Murder a Day!

This book provides a basic introduction to the development of mass communication in Britain. It examines the emergence of media industries and audiences in the context of issues of regulation and control. The focus is on the histories of the print, broadcasting and film media. The main landmarks in the development of these media are outlined as well as the key factors that have shaped the changing nature of their industrial organisation and structure and the character of their audiences. The book also examines how the growth of new forms of mass communication has always been accompanied by fears of their impact on popular opinions and behaviour. The concerns of powerful elites, news and information managers and moral entrepreneurs are treated as an integral part of the history of mass communication. Changing forms of censorship and control are examined throughout different historical periods. It begins with the birth of printing in the fifteenth century and traces emergence of the modern newspaper from the struggles of the nineteenth century radical press to the Wapping Revolution of the 1980s. The development of visual media is explored from the advent of the silent movies to the contemporary world of cable, satellite and the internet.