When George Gallup started out, mass culture was just taking shape. Henry Ford had standardized manufacturing; radio and telephones, everyone, even Hollywood, was starting to standardize options. Once it could be presumed that all American consumers wanted basically the same thing , American producers suddenly had a large stake in knowing what that was. So Gallup moved from a modest academic job in Chicago to a flashy post with an advertising firm in New York, Young and Rubicam.

      And so, the market research industry that he helped to invent, leaped into prominence.

     After he got to New York, he founded a company to test radio programming, book ideas and movie themes on sample audiences. He worked out which stars were the biggest box office draws, which scripts would win audiences.