"One of the great failures of the revival was that it never caught the imagination of a wide audience."
There were in my opinion several reasons for this,
.1. The Establishment were frightened of a movement that had a political edge to it and so discouraged the media from promoting it.
2. Ewan MacColl.I am sure he had the best of intentions, but his influence upon the revival was, in my opinion, a double edged sword, he encouraged political song writing, which was good, at the same time he influenced people to look to their uk roots, in some ways that was good,but it was never going to be of interest commercially.
by contrast look at Pete Seeger and the Weavers, this guy was brilliant, because despite being ostracised during the MacCarthy years, and subsequently he was able to get on to the us media and present programmes that got beyond the folk afficianados, he was eventually able to present songs of social comment and songs of underprivileged people on the us media and get his message across to thousands of people., check out rainbow quest, and other you tube.