The genre may be considered as a practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently and to relate its production to the expectations of its customers. Since it is also a practical device for enabling individual media users to plan their choices, it can be considered as a mechanism for ordering the relations between the two main parties to mass communication.

Dennis McQuail 1987, p. 200

 In that media texts hold similar patterns, codes and conventions that are both PREDICTABLE and EXPECTED, but are also INNOVATIVE and UNEXPECTED. 

. . . saddled with conventions and stereotypes, formulas and
clichés and all of these limitations were codified in specific genres. This was the very foundation of the studio system and audiences love genre pictures . . .Scorcese, A personal Journey through American Cinema (1995)

Key words:

predictable expectations –

einforced –

amplify –

 repertoire of elements –

 corpus –

verisimilitude –

construction of reality –

 historically specific –

sub-genres –

hybrid genres,