The present article discusses the importance of the early years of mass communications in order to understand the shaping of them – the power of creating mass media for whole nations. It begins with references to scholars studying large nations and asks whether their results can be generalized to smaller countries. Therefore, it uses Norway as a case study. To what degree were Norway’s four major mass media – press, film, radio and television – formed institutionally in their early years? And if they were formed in this way, how long did the consequences of such a formation last? These questions have been neglected topics in research, so in order to answer them we also need to rethink the connections between the different media.