Les, it is not really comparing apples with apples when you say the tradition was carried on by "the working class"
Many of the traditional songs were 'handed down' orally, as many of the singers were illiterate. In the days when many of these songs originate, there was no middle class, there was only 'them' and 'us'
TV and even radio, are 'new' in historical terms, we didn't have a TV till I was 14, and that was 1956. So if income was the ruling factor, as to whether you had a radio, or a TV, then of course the lower your income, the longer it is till you have 'canned' entertainment in the house. So you have to continue making your own.
Ergo, the oral tradition was a working class 'thing' for economic rather than cultural reasons.