Owning the Audience: Empire of Influence (1948-1999)When the Supreme Court broke up Hollywood's studio monopoly in 1948, it seemed the empire had fallen. Theaters were spun off, the moguls lost their grip, and the studio system-the industrial machine that had ruled American cinema-appeared finished. Yet out of that collapse rose something even larger: a global media order. Empire of Influence traces how Hollywood rebuilt itself across half a century of upheaval. The old studio hierarchy transformed into conglomerates that fused film, television, news, and advertising into one interlocking system of influence. From the birth of television and the antitrust battles of the 1950s to the rise of cable, VHS, and the Internet, Jason Wardle follows the power structures that turned entertainment into an instrument of empire. This second volume of Owning the Audience reveals how Hollywood's postwar reinvention mirrored broader transformations in global capitalism-how the means of storytelling became the means of control. It's the saga of a system that learned to survive every revolution by absorbing it.Inside the book: The Paramount Decrees and the birth of modern media conglomerates Television's conquest of the American living room and Hollywood's counter-offensive The rise of global distribution and the economics of cultural dominance Labor, advertising, and the ideology of entertainment as "choice" The road from analog film to digital empire: how the audience became the product By century's end, the studios had answered their oldest question-what are we without theaters?-and discovered the ultimate truth of modern power: whoever controls distribution controls perception itself.