Summary
en·ter·tain·ment – the act of diverting, amusing, or causing someone's time to pass agreeably; something that diverts, amuses, or occupies the attention agreeably.
in·dus·try – a department or branch of a craft, art, business, or manufacture: a division of productive or profit-making labor; especially one that employs a large personnel and capital; a group of productive or profit-making enterprises or organizations that have a similar technological structure of production and that produce or supply technically substitutable goods, services, or sources of income.
ec·o·nom·ics – a social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of commodities; considerations of cost and return.
Webster's Third New Unabridged International Dictionary, G. & C. Merriam Company, Springfield, Massachusetts, 1967.
Each year Americans cumulatively spend at least 140 billion hours and more than $280 billion a year on legal forms of entertainment. And globally, total annual spending is approaching $1 trillion. So we might begin by asking: What is entertainment, why is there so much interest in it, and what do its many forms have in common?
At the most fundamental level, anything that stimulates, encourages, or otherwise generates a condition of pleasurable diversion could be called entertainment. The French word divertissement perhaps best captures this essence.
But entertainment can be much more than mere diversion. It is something that is so universally interesting and appealing because, when it does what it is intended to do, it moves you emotionally. As the Latin root verb tenare suggests, it grabs you: It touches your soul.
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- Entertainment Industry EconomicsA Guide for Financial Analysis, pp. xix - xxiiPublisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2007
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