I have a take on this. As technology makes it cheaper to distribute things (I'm thinking all the way from printing press to VHS to streaming) the target audience grows. Each revolution in distribution broadens the pool of consumers. A book in the 1500s was only available to (and therefore likely directed at) wealthy and highly-educated people. Today, many (or most?) people can afford a Netflix account. Almost any Western person can watch a Tiktok video. I'm not trying to say that richer people are somehow better than the average person but I hope it's fair to say that, as media can reach more and more people, the target audience becomes less "sophisticated".