1990 editor's annual report

A variety of viewing measures were constructed to tap the ways people moved through an evening of television viewing, with particular focus on transitions between programs and channels. Based on these behaviors, five different styles of viewing were identified in a sample of adolescents. Of these, only one appeared to correspond to stereotypes of viewers as exercising little choice and just watching what was available. The viewing behaviors of the other four groups all indicate different ways of being active viewers.     

Videotime: Selection and Structuring Family Social Time With Rented Commercially Prerecorded Electronic Media

Using in-depth interviews, this research investigates family members' processes for renting and watching commercially prerecorded video electronic media. The study finds that renting prerecorded video material is a negotiated process that begins in advance of viewing, and concludes that the social aspects of viewing are of paramount importance and concern to most family-oriented renters. In short, the viewers consider the time spent watching a rented video, or videotime, as family social time that is structured around this communal act. This study extends previous research in this area by explicating how families make decisions and negotiate the structuring of videotime.     

VCR‐use and patterns of time shifting and selectivity

This article elaborates on research suggesting that the VCR is a time shifting device leading to more selectivity. It argues that time shifting can lead to time reduction or time filling and that selectivity can entail diversification or concentration of the TV diet. In both cases, however, no significant difference in TV viewing may occur as well. Data from a representative sample of 909 Flemish respondents showed no evidence of time‐reduction. The VCR is mainly used as a time‐filling device. VCR‐use does not seem to lead to concentration, but rather to diversification of the TV diet. Authors have claimed that the VCR is a device which allows better management of the viewing experience and which liberates viewers of the constraints of viewer or program availability. This article suggests instead that it may be more productive to look at the VCR as another channel (albeit it with peculiar characteristics). It influences the viewers’ TV consumption only to the extent that it is part of the viewers’ “channel repertoire” for selecting programs.     

Late-Night Learning: Do Entertainment Programs Increase Political Campaign Knowledge for Young Viewers?

The fragmenting media landscape has led many, particularly younger citizens, to identify entertainment-based programs as key sources of political information. This research used national survey data to examine whether exposure to comedy and late-night programs actually informs viewers, focusing on two kinds of political knowledge thought to differ depending on the media used: recall and recognition. Some support was found for the prediction that the consumption of such programs is more associated with recognition of campaign information than with actual recall. Age, however, demonstrated modest interaction effects with viewing.     

Agenda-Setting Through the Television Programming Schedule: An Examination of Major League Baseball on Fox

The core concept of the agenda-setting theoretical model is the transfer of topic salience from the media agenda to the public agenda. Sports leagues need to have their games properly positioned in the television programming schedule to assist their transfer of salience effort and help maximize their national popularity. A sports television programming schedule can be improved with an understanding of the fundamental structural and individual factors that influence audience media exposure. This article contends that the Major League Baseball on Fox programming schedule can be improved through three suggestions: (1) increasing exposure by having more games on the Fox over-the-air broadcast channel that is available in approximately 32 million more households than the Fox Sports One cable channel; (2) having games at a consistent placement in the programming schedule to increase viewers’ awareness and enhance that program and channel being a part of their repertoire to capitalize on their initial ritualized viewing; and (3) allowing all Major League Baseball teams to appear more often on Fox and Fox Sports One, eliminating regionalized broadcasts, and implementing a flexible schedule to provide more meaningful game matchups to capitalize on the audience’s advanced degree of instrumental viewing.     

Literature of broadcasting: Books in review

This study compared and integrated the influence of motivational and situational determinants on news viewing behavior. Individual people-meter data allowed the unobtrusive study of news viewing situations. The finding is that the viewing context is much more important than motivations. However, interest in the news and politics can reinforce or reverse situational influences. For interested viewers, watching more TV in general mainly explains news viewing, while for less interested viewers, lead-out effects and social viewing are more relevant.     

The Psychology of Marathon Television Viewing: Antecedents and Viewer Involvement

This study focuses on the expanding trend of marathon (“binge”) television viewing. It examines the personality antecedents of such media consumption (attachment style, depression, and self-regulation deficiency) as well as the psychological experiences of marathon viewers relative to the narrative (transportation, enjoyment) and its characters (parasocial relationship, identification). In a two-study design, theoretical models of media use and involvement, on one hand, and models of media addiction, on the other hand, are applied to predict the extent of marathon viewing and to compare it with “traditional” viewing. Results advance understanding of enjoyment and involvement theory and support cognitive theories of media addiction. At the same time, the study’s findings reveal that marathon television viewers are active both cognitively and emotionally during and after the media exposure, thus alleviating some concerns about the “problematic” nature of the “binge” viewing phenomenon.     

Open or Closed — This Is the Question: The Influence of Question Format on the Cultivation Effect

This study uses open ended and multiple choice questionnaires to examine the influence of question format on the cultivation effect. Student respondents (N=517) were requested to estimate the prevalence of criminality, single parent families, and sexual activity among teens in the society. The given estimates were compared to real world figures and to TV world values that were obtained from a content analysis of one week of prime-time network programming (63 hours from 3 different channels). The results confirm to cultivation predictions by pointing at differences between heavy viewers and light viewers, so that heavy viewers give extremer estimates, but the findings also indicate that the impact of the question format is greater than the effect of cultivation, and that the amount of viewing and the question format interact so that cultivation is more visible in open ended questionnaires.     

What Children Watch When They Watch TV: Putting Theory Into Practice

If advertisers and programmers are to keep pace with the rapid structural and contextual changes in broadcast and cable television, and maintain their young audiences, they must gain a better understanding of children's viewing motives and viewing patterns. The authors assess the interrelatedness of television use motives and viewing patterns, and investigate perceptions of viewer loyalty network and station identification, and the generalizability of these perceptions to times when local television stations change network affiliation. This study profiles the child televiewing audience and expands the known parameters of television viewer uses and gratifications by identifying three distinctive viewer archetypes-medium- oriented viewers, network-oriented viewers, and station-oriented viewers.     

Electronic monitoring of in‐home television RCD usage

This study electronically‐monitored in‐home RCD activity. The frequency of channel changing and other RCD behaviors were recorded and discrepancies between self‐reported and actual RCD use are examined. This is one of a few academic studies of RCDs that does not rely on a survey (respondent recall) or on observation, but rather records actual behaviors in the participants’ home. This study also examines viewers’ uses of RCDs within the framework of selective exposure.

Slightly over 374 hours of television viewing by 44 participants yielded 13,680 channel switches. It was found that viewers made an average of 36.6 channel changes per hour. In other words, they watched channels for an average of one minute and 38 seconds between switches. Further analyses revealed an audience of “rapid‐fire”; channel grazers as 80% of the switches took place after a channel was on for less than five seconds.     

Texting the Subject: Women,Television, and Modern Self-Reflexivity

Feminist audience research has often argued that the pleasures women find in watching certain popular television genres derive from their indulgence in “referential viewing”: relating their own subjective experience to television texts. But it has never been spelled out what this actually entails. This article, based upon research with women viewers of talk shows and morning magazine programs, suggests a specific methodology, “text in action,” to capture the specificities of the text/subject relationship. Findings arising from the use of this method suggest that accounts of the negotiation of subjectivity are induced through the text/subject interplay. Established explanations of “referential viewing” arrived at through traditional reception studies do not entirely account for the dialogic nature of these encounters. This article suggests that they can be more accurately explored through contemporary arguments about modern self-reflexivity where subjectivity can be seen to be discursively accomplishedthrough pragmatic actions across the broadcast encounter.     

Learning about Politics From The Daily Show: The Role of Viewer Orientation and Processing Motivations

Although late-night comedy and satirical news programs like The Daily Show have been recognized as important sources of political information, prior research suggests that viewers gain only a limited amount of political knowledge from watching these programs. Drawing from uses and gratification theory and extant research on political information processing, this study examines whether learning from The Daily Show depends on whether viewers orient to the message as news or as entertainment. Results from an online experiment suggest that viewers who orient to a segment from The Daily Show as news or as a mix of news and entertainment invest more mental effort and subsequently learn more than viewers who have a purely entertainment orientation. Further, among viewers with a purely entertainment orientation, providing them with an explicit informational-processing goal increases the amount of mental effort and learning relative to viewers who are given no explicit viewing objective.     

Watching TV Series with Horror Content: Audience Attributes,Motivations, Involvement and Enjoyment

This study is the first to explore the motivational, cognitive, affective, and personality factors that influence the enjoyment of and exposure to TV series with horror content. The most-watched TV series identified by 411 study participants were examined in the study. Results indicate that personality traits significantly predict cognitive and affective involvement with these programs and viewing motivations. Viewing motivations significantly influence viewers’ cognitive and affective involvement with these TV series as well as their viewing enjoyment and frequency. While positive affect and negative affect are significant predictors of viewing enjoyment, viewing enjoyment has a positive effect on viewing frequency.     

Cultivating Conceptions of Masculinity: Television and Perceptions of Masculine Gender Role Norms

The potential of television to both reflect and shape cultural understandings of gender roles has long been the subject of social scientific inquiry. The present study employed survey methodology with 420 emerging adult respondents (18–25 years old) in a national U.S. sample to explore associations between amount of time spent viewing television and views about “ideal” masculine gender roles. The viewing of particular television genres was explored in addition to (and controlling for) overall amount of time spent with the medium, using cultivation theory as the theoretical foundation. Results showed significant statistical associations between viewing sitcoms, police and detective programs, sports, and reality television and scores on the Masculine Roles Norms Inventory–Revised scale. Biological sex of respondent (which very closely approximated gender identity in the sample) moderated a number of these relationships, with positive associations between viewing some genres and endorsement of traditional masculine gender roles stronger for biological male compared to biological female respondents.     

Developmental Changes in Adolescents' Television Viewing Habits: Longitudinal Trajectories in a Three-Wave Panel Study

Trajectories of television viewing throughout adolescence were described using the data of a panel study in 12- to 17-year-olds. Results indicated that changes in viewing habits are different when daytime, prime-time, and late-night television viewing are examined separately. Although daytime and prime-time viewing showed a decline, viewing during later waking hours increased. Teenagers who have access to a television set in their room watch more; male viewers tend to avoid the "family hour" and "female contents." Findings are discussed within the framework of developmental processes as separation, the growth in alternative opportunities, and identity formation.     

Editors' Preface: Think Global. Drink Local. National Studies with Transnational Appeal

Ad-financed TV channels are two-sided platforms where media houses provide communication from advertisers to viewers. Most media houses air several channels, some of which are particularly valuable to advertisers. At first glance, one might expect the ad volumes to be highest for the channels that are the advertisers' favorites. However, a crucial management challenge for media houses is to ensure that viewers go where the potential for raising advertising revenue is greatest. Because viewers dislike ads, we show that this implies that advertising volumes will be relatively low (and advertising prices relatively high) in such channels. Indeed, other things equal, the ad volume in a channel is inversely related to its attractiveness to the advertising market. Only if the costs of using alternative tools to attract viewers to the advertisers' favorite channels are sufficiently small will the advertising volume in channels with high demand for ads be larger than in channels with low demand for ads.     

The rules of viewing television in public places

Naturalistic methods were employed in studying television viewing in a variety of public places. The behavioral regularities that emerged included adjustment to the setting, to other viewers and to the television set, as well as an openness for television‐related interaction.     

The soaps: What's on and who cares?

This two‐pronged study analyzed soap opera content, centering on demographics, problems, conversations and sex behaviors, and surveyed soap viewers to determine viewing motives, involvement, and possible effects of soap viewing.     

Television Use and Social Capital: Testing Putnam's Time Displacement Hypothesis

Robert Putnam (1995a, 19956) charged that television is the driving force behind the decline in social capital in America. He argued that television viewing has privatized our leisure time, thus inhibiting participation outside the home. However, Putnam's time displacement hypothesis never has been tested. We empirically examined the extent to which television reduces social capital through time displacement. Analyses of data from a Midwestern city (N = 416) did not support the time displacement hypothesis; time spent with television did not affect civic engagement through perceptions of time pressure. There was only a direct negative impact of television viewing time on civic engagement. Time spent reading newspapers enhanced engagement. Moreover, this relation worked indirectly through time pressures-the more time spent with newspapers, the less time pressures one perceived.