The Competitors

Abstract

At the start of the twentieth century the Scottish press was well established while cinema was an emerging cottage industry. By the century's end the mass media had become a highly organised force with profound social and economic power, developing from something that was of little threat to Scottish publishers to serious competition for the leisure time and money of Scottish readers. This chapter examines the development of Scotland's media industries and the range of mass media entertainment available to Scottish audiences in the twentieth century, while also considering the sometimes symbiotic, sometimes parasitic relationship between these new media and the oldest one.