A practical device for helping any mass medium to produce consistently and efficiently and to relate its production to the expectations of its customers. It can also be considered as a mechanism, for ordering the relations between the two main parties to mass communication.

 It helps identify how media texts are classified, organised and understood, essentially around SIMILARITIES and DIFFERENCE. Media texts hold similar patterns, codes and conventions that are both PREDICTABLE and EXPECTED, but are also INNOVATIVE (different) 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 . . . – this means that vertically integrations are massive factories that produce movies.

predictable expectations – When you know something is going happen or you are predicting it before it happens because it is very obvious

reinforced – which are done a certain way

amplify –

repertoire of elements –

verisimilitude –

corpus –

realism – looks very real

construction of reality. –

historically specific –

sub-genres –

hybrid genres –