It is a means to an end. The end is influence. Were the paper unable to influence, they could not sell advertising. Advertising revenue is usually the lion's share of print media revenue; in the case of broadcast media, it's virtually all their revenue. No matter how many people read the paper or watched the station, unless that medium is capable of modifying behavior, there isn't a dime in it no matter how entertaining it might be.Fiction entertainment sells advertising without (necessarily) selling a message of its own apart from the advertising to which it must draw eyes and/or ears. So it's not obvious that nonfiction entertainment must have Walter Cronkite levels of sheeple-benumbing credence in order for the advertisements to sell Oldsmobiles, or whatnot. Now a Rush Limbaugh charges an even more "confiscatory" rate (as he would put it) if he records the ad himself for use on his program: in that case Rush's credibility is playing into the effectiveness of the ad. But people not only would have been horrified if Walter Cronkite had personally advertised Coke and Pepsi on alternate days, they would have been horrified if he had personally endorsed either one for pay.
You have a very odd and subjectively broad definition of, "entertainment."I mean by "entertainment" the attracting of attention to something unimportant. On any given day The New York Times will have a lead headline - and the best news you could have would be if the lead headline on the front page was a story about a midseason baseball game. That would signify that nothing particuarly bad happened since the last deadline.
The network gets paid for the effectiveness of the medium to control behavior. Entertainment, in by its agreed definition, is an effective means, but not even the dominant one.
I mean by "entertainment" the attracting of attention to something unimportant.
As I said, subjectively broad, to the point of meaninglessness.