We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.
Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.
THE CINEMA AND SOCIETY
and music halls flourish, but on a scale which is dwarfed by the cinema, whose audiences in Britain are as great in one week as a whole year's attendance in all 'live* theatres in the country added together. The outpouring of entertainment and information never seems to stop; but what is probably the most influential element in this constant supply of enjoyment, broadcasting in sound and later in vision, has only been possible for a quarter of a century.
The distinction to be made between entertainment provided at home and in public is discussed in the chapter on television. But even if the dramatic impact of broadcasting at home is much less than that in the 'live' theatre or the cinema (that is, entertainment in public), it is far more pervasive; it is there virtually all one's waking hours and accessible on such easy terms that it is as familiar as the furniture. It is so much a part of ordinary life that no amount of cinema-going is likely to take its place as a constant factor which colours people's lives, knowledge, and sense of values. Virtually every home in the country has a radio set; in 1954 nearly 14 million licences were issued for sound radio, or nearly one licence to every three persons alive in Britain, adult and child alike. A licence may represent a number of receivers operating in one home, and there are always the pirates who cannot be bothered to take out a licence at all.
Here are the main statistics of cinema attendance in Great Britain.
1. Average Weekly Admissions,
1946: 31.4 millions. 1949: 27.5 millions. 1951: 26 millions, 1954 : 25 millions.
2. Spread of Adult Attendance (ig^o),
38% regular cinema-goers (14.7% going twice a week or more;
23.3% going once a week). 42.5% occasional cinema-goers (27.9% going less than once a
month; 8.5% going once a month; 6.1% going once a
fortnight) . 19.5% those who never go to a cinema.
217