Entertainment

Broadcast
No longer as pervasive a force in this day and age, television has moved into the lowest level of mass entertainment. Far fewer channels crowd the airwaves, and most are various cable and subscriber channels limited to a single city or to small audiences of cities within a few hundred miles of each other. These cover everything including sports, news, music videos, old movies, foreign shows, religious programming, debate, erotic and adult programming, business news, and weather. In addition, there are still many single-band pirate radio stations scattered throughout the post-War world.

Network Programming
In the Euro and Asian theaters, most programming is still state-controlled—the BBC in Great Britain and NGK TV in Japan—for example. In the United States, three privately owned entertainment networks dominate: recent arrival New Century Broadcasting (NCB), World Broadcasting Network (WBN), and Network News 54. These networks are the broadcast divisions of three massive entertainment conglomerates, each producing data chips, games, streaming content, videos, movies, and books for the masses. The product is bland, mindless, and caters to the lowest possible denominator. With the collapse of the NET and the Sat Nets, however, network programming faces fierce competition from new entertainment forms, such as the Data Pool and PopMedia.

SatFeeds
In addition to network programming, there are still a few satellite feeds, featuring programming from around the world (many of the SatFeeds of the late 2020s were casualties of the War). There are also a large number of "pirate" TV stations, operating out of hidden stations and through cable and pirate Highrider satellite patch-ups. These are often a major source of news and information untainted by Corporate or government interference. In addition to the standard high definition flat screen TV of the pre-War era, experimental (and expensive— up to 10,000eb per set) 3-D holographic TV systems are available.

PopMedia
By the mid-2020s, most media in America was controlled by one or more gigantic multimedia Megacorps, such as the ubiquitous Network 54 or its most aggressive rival, DNS. Even news was channeled through a Megacorporate filter, with World News Service (WNS) dominating the airwaves through its 22-channel, 24/7 news programming (heavily laden with subliminals and talking head commentary). The problem was that as the 21st century wore on, these mighty media megaliths became little more than house organs for their parent Corporations, or mouthpieces for the dominant political party of the time. With a corrupt FCC controlling access to the airwaves, there wasn't much chance that a dissenting voice could break through, so for most of the early Cyberpunk Age, people were resigned to a diet of insipid reality shows, mind-numbing entertainment vids, bad movies, and Corp-sponsored sports shows. Then came the 4th Corporate War and the DataKrash. The Mediacorps were the hardest hit by these events, since they depended on the NET's instantaneous communication and access to huge TV/radio transmitters to broadcast their programming. But as established media outlets fell apart, new ways to disseminate information and programming arose to fill the gap. And the main format to make the cut was PopMedia.
PopMedia is entertainment and news programming created by independent producers instead of huge Mediacorps. Combining audio, data, and visual images in a podcast-like format, PopMedia provides most of the Red Era's programming (as well as an ungodly amount of trash), most coming from five main sources: New Mediacorps, Rockers, Idols, Independents, and Medias.
A lot of PopMedia is consumed via the Garden, an "all you can eat" content platform run by Ziggurat.

Rockerboys
Named after the famed rebel rock star of the late '90s with the stage name of Rockerboy Manson, today's Rockerboys are performers or agitators who operate without the support of a New Mediacorp. They provide performance shows: concert footage, music tracks with visuals, personal observations, even braindance experiences. Idols are similar to Rockers, but their programming tends to be equivalent to an old-style "reality" show of the 2000s—it's all about the Idol.

Braindance
An offshoot of the same neural interface technology that spawned the cyberware revolution (see above), braindance is considered the purest form of entertainment around. The braindance unit consists of a memory chip playback unit and a cable that can access an interface plug or convert to surface trodes. It plays chips which contain recorded experiences—not just visual and auditory info—but complete emotional and tactile info, as well. Braindance chips let you feel what the performer was feeling at the time (albeit heavily edited so as not to discomfort the buying public). As with most tech, braindance is a double-edged sword: it's been used to pacify prisoners almost as much as to entertain the masses. In the 2010s, it looked as if braindance technology was to be the next great step in entertainment. However, psychological addiction and the expense of producing quality braindance chips has made this format less popular.

Body Lotto
The Night City "Body Lottery" is a regular nightly lottery where six winning numbers are chosen depending on how many corpses are found in areas of Night City. The numbers of the Body Lotto are taken from six random districts within the Night City Greater Metro Area. Numbers are derived from the locations that cadavers are found, not necessarily from where they were murdered. All numbers are accumulated by the Night City Police Department (or what remains of it) and verified by the investment firm of Merrill, Asukaga & Finch. People holding a winning ticket must contact the downtown offices of MA&F by 10a.m. the next morning. If no one claims the winning ticket, the next night's winnings go up by 1,000eb.