Approval rating?

Yes, entertainement building will help you, as well as building (and upgrading) mining starbase on morale resources.

You can try researching entertainment techs too. You get an immediate bonus from that, and often you get trade goods that boost morale as well as a result. Also, as you progress down the trade techs, you can eventually build stock markets which also give a morale boost ( I think). So really, you dont need to build entertainment, I only do if overall approval ratings drop below 65, if I am using Interstellar Republic. If not, then I dont care much about it. Might be a problem on higher difficulties.

I was suffering from low approval due to population. I had built two farms on Earth. I whacked one of the farms and built an entertainment network, and earth went from 40 to 60% approval, 77 overall on a small map with very few habitable. It doesn't make sense, and goes against every other space conquest strategy game (moo, space empires, etc.) I've ever played, but it worked to some extent. If population is the problem, make sure you don't have too many farms (shakes head). The game is otherwise so enjoyable I'm trying to hold my nose and get by this qwirk of game play.

Presumably the farms meant that you could crowd more people onto the same planet but they didnt like living on top of one another. The entertainment network took their mind off of things.