<P> Ford opened factories around the world and proved a strong competitor in most markets for its low - cost, easy - maintenance vehicles . General Motors, to a lesser degree, followed along . European competitors avoided the low - price market and concentrated on more expensive vehicles for upscale consumers . </P> <P> Radio became the first mass broadcasting medium . Radios were expensive, but their mode of entertainment proved revolutionary . Radio advertising became the grandstand for mass marketing . Its economic importance led to the mass culture that has dominated society since this period . During the "Golden Age of Radio", radio programming was as varied as the Television programming of the 21st century . The 1927 establishment of the Federal Radio Commission introduced a new era of regulation . </P> <P> In 1925, electrical recording, one of the greatest advances in sound recording, became available for commercially issued gramophone records . </P> <P> The cinema boomed, producing a new form of entertainment that virtually ended the old vaudeville theatrical genre . Watching a film was cheap and accessible; crowds surged into new downtown movie palaces and neighborhood theaters . Since the early 1910s, lower - priced cinema successfully competed with vaudeville . Many vaudeville performers and other theatrical personalities were recruited by the film industry, lured by greater salaries and less arduous working conditions . The introduction of the sound film at the end of the decade in the 1920s eliminated vaudeville's last major advantage . Vaudeville was in sharp financial decline . The prestigious Orpheum Circuit, a chain of vaudeville and movie theaters, was absorbed by a new film studio . </P>

Culture of the united states in the 1920s