I can tell you from experience that the majority of media certainly doesn't give me what I want, but that's not the point of the question. In mass, does the media give people what they ask for, or do the people develop a taste for what the media gives us?
The gut instinct of the optimist is to say that the media gives us what we want. What they produce changes with what we're willing to pay for and consume. An inverted Frankfurt school of thought, if you will (and I do). On the other hand, the gut instinct of the pessimist, of those so many in my generation who are jaded for reasons I still don't fully understand (really, the world hasn't been that bad to us, come now) is to say the media gives us what they want, what is safe and will make them money, and we eat it up.
This is where the Birmingham (see? I take notes!) model comes in; Neither the pessimist nor the optimist is completely right. The reality is a compromise, wherein the consumers don't always buy what's given to them. We wouldn't have bombs at the box office if this weren't the case. And the media does give us more of what we've taken to. I think it's funny, people complain when a band doesn't deliver more of the same (I know, I know, "but better"), but get upset when movie studios do the same thing... Hm...
Anyway, the point is, I feel that it's a balance of power between the consumers and the media. Neither is completely responsible for what the other does.