Test Bank for Media of Mass Communication, 11/e
Chapter 9 Entertainment
9.1 Multiple-Choice Questions
1) When did entertainment evolve as part of human culture?
A) with Gutenberg’s introduction of movable type
B) with the introduction of the musical instrument
C) when the Romans built Circus Maximus, which held 170,000 spectators
D) before the emergence of written human history
2) The core categories of media entertainment remain
A) sports and music.
B) art and literature.
C) storytelling and music.
D) live entertainment and books.
3) Entertainment came into the age of mass communication and began to reach large, mass
audiences with the introduction of
A) Johannes Gutenberg’s movable type.
B) romance novels.
C) pulp Westerns and dime novels.
D) television.
4) Broad thematic categories of media content are called
A) cross-overs.
B) genres.
C) generics.
D) blockbusters.
5) Which of the following would NOT be considered a thematic genre of entertainment?
A) rock and roll
B) books
C) sports
D) sci-fi
6) Which of these entertainment categories contains the clearest genres within itself?
A) storytelling
B) music
C) sports
D) movies
7) The youngest woman to ever make the Forbes list of the 100 Most Influential Females in the
world was
A) Britanny Spears.
B) Hillary Cinton.
C) Lady Gaga.
D) Oprah Winfrey.
8) Attending a Broadway show, you would be witnessing an example of
A) production-line entertainment.
B) authentic performance.
C) the Miller Standard at work.
D) mediated performance.
9) A live, on-site performance is said to be a(n)
A) authentic performance.
B) mediated performance.
C) live performance.
D) scripted performance.
10) What is the primary difference separating an authentic performance from a mediated
performance?
A) timeliness
B) quality
C) subject matter
D) audience feedback
11) A blockbuster movie shown on television would be considered
A) authentic performance.
B) mediated performance.
C) artistic performance.
D) recorded performance.
12) Special adjustments made to ensure that the message of a performance will be effectively
delivered by mass media transform the performance into
A) an authentic performance.
B) a live-on-tape performance.
C) a mediated message.
D) a pre-recorded message.
13) Which came first in the ongoing waves of popular television content?
A) variety shows
B) quiz shows
C) reality shows
D) police dramas
14) What is the ultimate determinant of genre trends?
A) media conglomerates
B) the Federal Communications Commission
C) producers
D) audiences
15) Rhythm and blues emerged from early black music during the
A) 1850s and 1860s.
B) 1880s and 1890s.
C) 1930s and 1940s.
D) 1950s and 1960s.
16) Hillbilly music had its origins in the
A) rock ‘n’ roll of the 1950s.
B) rhythm and blues of the 1920s and 1930s.
C) cowboy and western songs from the Old West.
D) English ballads and ditties brought to rural Appalachia.
17) Early rock `n’ rock music can be best understood as an evolution that sprang from
A) the blues.
B) country/western music.
C) protest music.
D) rockabilly.
18) Sam Phillips was important in the emergence of rock ‘n’ roll because he
A) specialized in black artists singing popular white music.
B) discovered Elvis Presley.
C) defended payola even after being convicted.
D) invented the term “rock ‘n’ roll.”
19) What happened immediately after Natalie Maines of the Dixie Chicks criticized President
George Bush for the Iraq War?
A) Their music sales skyrocketed.
B) Legislation was introduced to censor artists.
C) Their music was banned from many radio stations.
D) There was no impact on music sales.
20) What was the response of major recording labels when independent producers introduced rap
music?
A) They initially missed the significance of it.
B) They quickly added rap artists to their labels.
C) They attempted to kill rap music.
D) They bought indie labels.
21) Sports as popular media content can be traced to
A) the founding of ESPN.
B) the founding of Sports Illustrated.
C) regular coverage in James Gordon Bennett’s New York Herald.
D) ABC’s Wide World of Sports in 1961.
22 Celebrity coverage of sports began in 1910 with prize-fighter John L. Sullivan covering a title
heavyweight fight in
A) Vanity Fair.
B) the New York Times.
C) Sports Illustrated.
D) World Fight News.
23) In 1921, Pittsburgh radio station KDKA was the first to carry what type of programming?
A) rockabilly music
B) rhythm and blues music
C) play-by-play football games
D) play-by-play baseball games
24) Who created Sports Illustrated?
A) Jim McKay
B) James Gordon Bennett
C) Vince McMahon
D) Henry Luce
25) Roone Arledge created what popular sports program for ABC in 1961?
A) Wide World of Sports
B) Friday Night Fights
C) Monday Night Football
D) WWF Smackdown
26) What was Les Brown describing when he said, “At once topical and entertaining, performed live
and suspensefully without a script, peopled with heroes and villains, full of action and human
interest and laced with pageantry and ritual”?
A) live theater
B) music
C) storytelling
D) sports
27) Which sports event attracts the largest worldwide television audience?
A) World Cup
B) Super Bowl
C) World Series
D) Stanley Cup
28) In recent years, the major television networks have come to view sports programming as
A) profit makers.
B) loss leaders.
C) revenue neutral.
D) program interference.
29) How big is the U.S. sex industry?
A) $100 million to $250 million in profits a year
B) $80 billion in profits a year
C) $60 million in revenues a year
D) $8 billion to $10 billion in revenues a year
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30) What Irish classic was originally banned in the U.S. because of its sexual content until a 1930
court decision?
A) Ulysses
B) Trinity
C) How Many Miles to Babylon?
D) The Country Girls
31) What is the difference between obscene material and pornographic material?
A) Obscene material contains offensive language, while pornography is visually oriented.
B) Obscene material can be banned by the government, while pornography cannot.
C) Pornographic material is sexually oriented, whereas obscene material is any other objectionable
content.
D) Obscene material is protected by the Miller Standard, whereas pornographic material is not.
32) What does the Miller Standard define?
A) how old one has to be in order to view sexually explicit materials
B) which sexual content is protected from government bans
C) which media are protected from government oversight
D) at what times of day explicit material can be broadcast
33) In order for material to be banned as obscene,
A) a minimum number of complaints must be lodged with the FCC.
B) it must fail all three of the tests set forth by the Miller Standard.
C) it must be inappropriately available to children.
D) it must fail any one test set forth by the Miller Standard.
34 Which of the following is NOT protected by the First Amendment?
A) obscenity
B) pornography
C) soft porn
D) material devoid of serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value
35) A U.S. Supreme Court ruling against Sam Ginsberg, a New York sandwich shop owner, remains
the legal basis for
A) greater freedom of speech for spoken words included in hip-hop lyrics.
B) laws prohibiting the sale of pornographic material to children.
C) laws defining and prohibiting child pornography.
D) tighter standards of acceptability for all lyrics in recorded music.
36) What was the upshot of the Pacifica case?
A) Broadcasters became more careful of their content at times that children might be listening.
B) The sea shell music genre grew in popularity because it was no longer banned.
C) New York station WBAI was exonerated of wrong-doing in the George Carlin case.
D) Peter Jackson had to chose New Zealand over the U.S. to shoot Lord of the Rings.
37) Which comedian was at the heart of the Pacifica case?
A) Lenny Bruce
B) George Carlin
C) Richard Pryor
D) Bill Cosby
38) In response to criticism about sex and violence in video games, the gaming industry has
A) done nothing.
B) devised a rating system with “EC” for early childhood and “AO” for adults only.
C) adopted the rating system used for movies.
D) adopted the rating system used for television.
39) What is an auteur?
A) a performer who is less than professional but more than an amateur
B) a movie-maker whose cinematic contributions are significant and original
C) high-brow artistic content that is too sophisticated for a mass audience. D) media content lacking
artistic excellence
40) Who of the following figures in film-making would NOT be considered an auteur?
A) Jean-Luc Godard
B) Stanley Kubrick
C) Adolph Zukor
D) Spike Lee
41) Movies produced by Hollywood’s studio system and the romance novels published by
Harlequin are both examples of
A) elitist entertainment.
B) authentic creation.
C) production-line entertainment.
D) media with high production values.
42) The term “pulp fiction” was first coined to denote
A) inexpensively produced short novels.
B) magazines printed on slick paper.
C) books printed on slick paper.
D) cheap magazines filled with short stories.
43) According to the descriptions in the textbook, the television show Dancing with the Stars would
be classified as an example of
A) high art.
B) low art.
C) auteur art.
D) kitsch.
44) Who categorized cultural and artistic works along socioeconomic and intellectual lines to draw
distinctions between high-culture, middle-culture, and low-culture audiences?
A) Dwight Macdonald
B) Herbert Gans
C) Marshall McLuhan
D) Andre Bazin
45) The Taliban has driven a once robust movie industry underground in what country?
A) Iraq
B) Turkey
C) Pakistan
D) India
46) Susan Sontag wrote “On Culture and the New Sensibility” that
A) divided art into highbrow, middlebrow and lowbrow.
B) clearly defined kitsch.
C) said pop art has cultural and social value.
D) severely criticized Hollywood.
47) A lowbrow audience would most likely read
A) The Iliad.
B) National Enquirer.
C) Romeo and Juliet.
D) Pride and Prejudice.
48) What word became popular during the 1960s after elitist began to accept Susan Sontag’s view
that pop art could have artistic and cultural merit?
A) cool
B) groovy
C) camp
D) far out
9.2 True/False Questions
1) As long as there have been celebrities, there have been media outlets that tried to bring them to
the public eye.
2) The celebrity craze and special media to track them started soon after World War II but didn’t
really take off until the advent of the Internet.
3) According to the Pew Research Center, the vast majority of respondents feel that the media
coverage of celebrity scandals has gone overboard.
4) The Romans had a venue that held 170,000 spectators for athletic events.
5) The impact of the entertainment content of today’s mass media is easy to measure.
6) Broad thematic categories of media content are called genres.
7) The government defines what constitutes an entertainment genre.
8) Genres are most complicated in sports because of all the rules.
9) Lady Gaga made the cover of Time’s issue featuring the 100 Most Influential People in the World.
10) Lady Gaga has parlayed her talent and outrageous media persona into generous support for
causes she believes in including fighting HIV, AIDS, and childhood bullying.
11) Lady Gaga’s “charitable contributions” are just part of her act, don’t really amount to much, and
are only a miniscule portion of the revenue she brings in.
12) People who attend a Broadway play are witnessing an authentic performance.
13) Mass media can change performance.
14) Audience feedback is necessary for something to be an authentic performance.
15) Technology is a key component of a mediated performance.
16) Made-for-TV movies are examples of authentic performance.
17) Among the earliest popular genres in U.S. television entertainment were variety and quiz
shows.
18) Some storytelling genres have lasted through the centuries; others have been short-lived,
quickly rising to peak popularity and then virtually dying out.
19) Black and hillbilly music can be traced to the same roots.
20) Rhythm and blues emerged during the Civil War.
21) Black and hillbilly music merged to create rockabilly music, which became rock ‘n’ roll.
22) Sam Phillips discovered Elvis Presley.
23) Many musicologists have concluded that Jackie Brenston’s Rocket 88 began rock ‘n’ roll as a
music genre.
24) Music can be a powerful force in societal issues.
25) Rap is music with intense bass, rhyming riffs, and often anti-establishment lyrics.
26) The Dixie Chicks were praised by conservatives after a member of the group criticized
President Obama.
27) Even political leaders recognize the power music can have and often incorporate it into their
political campaigns.
28) The first U.S. President to effectively use a campaign song was Bill Clinton.
29) Music is both a media unto itself and an important component of several other mass media.
30) James Gordon Bennett was a New York newspaper publisher who first assigned reporters to
sports events on a regular basis in the 1830s.
31) Newspaper publisher Joseph Pulitzer fueled audience interest in sports after organizing the
first separate sports department in his New York World in the 1880s.
32) The first play-by-play broadcast of a baseball game took place in 1943.
33) Henry Luce, the publisher of Time and Life, created Sports Illustrated in 1954.
35) Roone Arledge created Wide World of Sports.
36) Sports programming continues to be a huge profit center for television.
37) A product that makes money but eventually leads to losses is called a loss leader.
38) The mass media seldom traffic sexual content.
39) Ulysses, by James Joyce, was banned because it focused almost entirely on sexual content.
40) The U.S. pornography industry’s revenue can be tracked precisely and legally through
government-required financial reports.
41) Pornography is protected by the First Amendment, but obscenity is not.
42) The legal basis for determining whether sexually explicit media content is obscene or not is the
Miller standard.
43) The Miller Standard determines whether material can be broadcast when children might be
able to hear or see it.
44) Government restrictions on sexual media content gradually eased in the late 20th century.
45) Special conditions about sexual media content and children were established in the Ginsburg
case.
46) The Pacifica case on broadcast indecency involved Johnny Carson on The Tonight Show.
47) After the Pacifica case, broadcasters became more careful about indecency at times that
children might be listening.
48) Experts predict that video gaming will continue to expand in the future and become more
integrated with other forms of entertainment media.
49) Sales of video games in the U.S. outpaced movies for the first time in 2001.
50) Almost one quarter of Americans age 6 or older play video games.
51) Games have no rating system for parental guidance.
52) In recent years, some video games (e.g., Madden NFL) have attracted larger audiences than
major blockbuster programming (e.g., The Sopranos) on television.
53) Iranian filmmaker Jafar Panahi was honored at the Cannes Film Festival for producing movies
that prompted his arrest and prosecution in his own home country.
54) The term “auteur” is used for media content lacking artistic excellence.
55) The Hollywood Studio System in effect turned moviemaking into a factory process.
56) Harlequin romance novels are considered pulp fiction.
57) Susan Sontag saw no redeeming value in pop art.
58) The strong links between sports and the media are obvious: on television sporting events draw
a huge audience, and the sports section is the second-largest section in most daily newspapers.
59) Lots of media content can be dismissed as second-rate, but essayist Susan Sontag points out
that even pop art has social value in broadening the common experience of a society.
60) Mediated entertainment can give voice and feeling to ideas and protests that ultimately build
up political pressure and bring about social change.
9.3 Short Answer Questions
1) In the days before cable television and the Internet, the primary media venue for celebrity
coverage was celebrity __________.
2) _________ are broad thematic categories of media content.
3) Genres are clearest in __________ because the rules have been agreed upon.
4) The song “Born This Way” by __________ set a music industry record for selling one million copies
in the fastest time, only five days.
5) One key difference between authentic and mediated performance is __________, or the interplay
between performer and audience.
6) A live play with the audience on-site is an example of __________ performance.
7) A play shot in a studio with multiple cameras and broadcast on television is an example of
__________ performance.
8) Genre trends in the media are __________-driven as people flock to a particular book, song, film, or
television show and then to the thematic sequels and spin-offs inspired by it.
9) A blending of black music and hillbilly music led to a new genre called rockabilly, which evolved
quickly into __________.
10) __________, a song about a new car model by Ike Turner and His Kings of Rhythm, is often cited as
the song that launched rock `n’ roll as a new musical genre.
11) Perhaps the most important figure in establishing rock `n’ roll as a genre was __________, a
Memphis disc jockey, promoter, and record producer.
12) The biggest star discovered by Sam Phillips was _________.
13) Music sales for the __________ fell after a group member criticized President George Bush in front
of a London audience.
14) Joseph __________ organized the first newspaper sports department in the 1880s.
15) ABC and Roone Arledge established a major presence in televised sports with __________.
16) From a financial standpoint, television networks now view sports programming as a _________.
17) __________ was established to cover sports by the company that published Time and Life.
18) ___________, a novel by James Joyce, was banned in the United States until a court decision.
19) U.S. courts make a distinction between obscenity, which can be legally banned, and __________,
which cannot.
20) The test to determine which sexual content is protected from government bans is the __________
Standard.
21) The __________ case, which dealt with a radio station playing a comedy routine that contained
vulgarities, resulted in stations restricting indecent material to late at night.
22) Film directors with distinctive and artistically significant visions, messages, and techniques are
sometime referred to as __________.
23) The __________ turned Hollywood moviemaking into a kind of factory process in the 1920s.
24) Making a movie based on a video game is an example of __________ adaptation.
25) Quickly, inexpensively produced novels that are easy to read are sometimes called __________
fiction.
26) Sociologist Herbert Gans categorized cultural and artistic work to identify high-culture, middle-
culture and low-culture __________.
27) The __________ effectively shut down the movie industry in Peshawar in northwest Pakistan,
driving it underground.
9.4 Matching Questions
Match each concept in the left column with the best example from the right column.
1) Storytelling genre
A) Pornography
2) Authentic performance
B) Rhythm and blues
3) Mediated performance
C) Run-DMC
4) Hillbilly music
D) Harlequin romances
5) Highbrow
E) Wide World of Sports
6) Rap music
F) Rocket 88
7) Lowbrow
G) Baseball
8) Mediated sports
H) Devoid of serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value
9) Miller Standard
I) Rockabilly
10) Pulp fiction
J) The National Enquirer
11) Production-line
K) Pearl Jam’s World Wide Suicide
12) Sports genre
L) A Fellini film
13) Feedback
M) Spider-Man
14) Black music
N) Horror
15) Rock `n’ roll
O) Madden NFL
16) Adult entertainment
P) Fiddle-playing with twangy lyrics
17) Video game
Q) Movie
18) Music of dissent
R) Hollywood studio system
19) Cross-media adaptation
S) Applause
20) Music genre
T) Broadway play
Chapter 9 Entertainment
14.5 Essay Questions
1) Counting sports, there are three major categories of entertainment. Describe these three broad
categories of entertainment and cite two examples of each.
Page Ref: 233-34, Topic: Entertainment in History
2) Explain why it is easier to define and clearly distinguish the various genres that exist within
3) Describe the differences between authentic and mediated performances and provide two
examples of each.
4) Describe the types of changes that could be introduced into the message by the process of
converting an authentic performance (e.g., a Broadway play) into a mediated performance. In your
discussion be sure to explain whether there would be one conversion to produce a mediated
performance suitable for all mass media or whether separate conversions would be required for
each medium. If possible, include an example of a story that has gone through this process to
illustrate your explanation.
5) Describe the early evolution of rock ‘n’ roll in terms of the different musical genres that led to its
creation.
6) Briefly trace the financial relationship that has evolved between the major television networks
and sports leagues, explaining the costs and benefits each incurs from televised coverage of
sporting events.
7) Discuss the basic differences between pornography and obscenity and the difference in how
8) Discuss the reasons producers and media executives alike are often willing to sacrifice creativity
and artistry in producing mass media entertainment, and explain how and why their expected
audiences are factored into these decisions.