Mass culture grows through intensification and centralization of appeal, not replacement.

Evidence

My argument is not that there was in England one generation ago, an urban culture still very much “of the people” and that now there is only a mass urban culture. It is rather that the appeals made by mass publicists are for a number of reasons made more insistently, effectively, and in a more comprehensive and centralised form than they were earlier; that we are moving towards the creation of a mass culture … and that the new mass culture is in some important ways less healthy than the often crude culture it is replacing. (Hoggart 1958: 24) Diagnosis is a useful term here-the word “healthy” is telling-since it reminds us of what this conclusion owed to, and how much it was influenced by, the cultural critique offered by the Leavises and Scrutiny : the embattled position adopted in F. — Hall, Stuart, Essential Essays, Volume 1, 145

Categorization

• XREF: Hoggart’s intensification thesis anticipates the ‘concentration of media ownership’ critique and scale economies in media economics.