"Men don't care what's on TV.
They only care what else is on TV."

*Jerry Seinfeld*

A world of spectators? Not, we are participants here.

...the huge entertainment industry that arose in the United States
in parallel with the industrial city

It happened terribly fast. In 1880 there was;

no recorded sound,
no moving pictures,
no football,
no basketball,
no vaudeville,
no ragtime, jazz or blues,
no Tin Pan Alley.

By the first decade of the 20th century all were in place and were-or
were about to be-matters of intense national concern.

It does not take much imagination
to grasp the sense of dislocation