Regulating Swish: Early Television Censorship

This article investigates the mechanisms of early television censorship from 1947 to 1952, looking at the restrictions placed on content, and the process that shows and advertisements went through before being broadcast. This article focuses on the inner workings of the National Broadcasting Company's (NBC) censoring arm, the Continuity Acceptance Department, and takes into consideration the medium-specific qualities of television and the challenges presented to those who had the task of regulating broadcast content. In addition to a general discussion of regulations, this article examines the censorship of homosexual characterizations in early television, looking specifically at the use of ‘swish’ routines (which make use of stereotyped gay mannerisms) in comedy shows. While networks and the National Association for Radio and Television Broadcasters established codes to govern their censorship apparatuses, the process of censorship was less an enforcement of hard and fast rules than a constant negotiation over content and allowable material.     

Planning Istanbul’s Public Library System

The paper is an attempt to analyse the role of Nigerian television (TV) journalists as major participants in mass information production, transfer, and, delivery. The analysis centres on the legal, political, economic, and cultural contexts in which the TV journalists operate, and the dangers, problems, and frustrations involved in this operation. It also analyses the strategic role of the TV and its impact as a medium of mass information. The paper concludes by analyzing how TV programming orientation has been skewed in favour of more literate urban and semi-urban populations, and how Nigeria's legal, political, economic, and cultural environments are unfavourable for conscientious and conscious TV journalists. It suggests that only when the TV journalists re-orient themselves and assert their right as people's conscience can they mobilize society for positive change.     

Fan mail to Liberace

Although stations, networks and advertisers spend hundreds of thousands of dollars annually on various rating services and audience measurement surveys, they often overlook a gold mine of voluntarily submitted feedback from their audience: the fan letter. It is true that the “pan” letter condemning a program often gets inordinate attention on decision‐making levels, but the run‐of‐the‐mill fan letter, if properly analyzed, can provide a wealth of information about the effect of a program upon its audience. Charles Winick is author of Taste and the Censor in Television (an Occasional Paper for the Fund for the Republic) and numerous articles in publications dealing with the mass media, such as Gazette, and the Journal op Broadcasting (“Censor and Sensibility,” Spring, 1962). Dr. Winick is a research psychologist and children's television program consultant at NBC who has taught and conducted research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Columbia University and New York University.     

Standpoint: Television broadcasting leads Romania's march toward an open,democratic society

Television broadcasting started slowly in Romania and for decades languished under strict state control. However, since it helped break the shackles of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu's unique blend of Communist dogma and censorship, it has been leading Romania's march toward a more open, democratic society. At first, broadcast improvements were slow to develop as the first democratically elected regime in post‐revolutionary Romania maintained its Communist‐era monopoly overstate television. More recently Romania has seen a dramatic increase in broadcast competition and freedom. Four factors have played particularly significant roles in spurring improvements: the development of alternative networks, access to Western‐style programming and production techniques, the rise of private, independent broadcasters, and the international exchange of broadcast content.     

Political Power and Periodicals

The publication of Bulgarian serials (called "periodicals" in this article, using the historical Bulgarian term) began in 1844 with the appearance of Liuboslovie. From that time until the recent collapse of the Communist regime, the press has been subjected to censorship and repression, first by the Turkish overlords and later by several of the Bulgarian governments. This article, the first of two parts, focuses on the suppression of the periodical press following the rise of the Communist "people's democracy," which forced virtually all the periodicals that had been published in Bulgaria prior to that time to cease publication. The second part will be devoted to Bulgaria's new-found freedom of the press that has emerged following forty-five years of totalitarianism.     

A discriminant analysis of television viewers and nonviewers

In 1993, only 0.8 percent of Brazilian households were connected to cable TV, even though 81 percent of all homes had at least one television set. In 1996, the number of cable households had climbed to almost 5 percent, an impressive growth, but still disappointing when compared to the average of 11 percent of cable households in Latin America. This examination of the problem will explore why cable TV's growth has been slow in Brazil.     

What's on TV? The Impact of Brand Image and Celebrity Credibility on Television Consumption from an Ingredient Branding Perspective

Today's multichannel, multimedia marketing environment presents a new layer of challenges. New demands from potential television viewers translate directly into the need of the creation and development of effective marketing strategies for the television (TV) market. This study proposes and validates a research model that analyzes an individual's TV show consumption by testing the impact of brand image and celebrity credibility. Based on the theoretical discussion, hypotheses were derived and tested with structural equation modeling on a basis of 306 consumers. Generally, the article provides evidence that brand image is the driving force in the explanation of a viewer's motivation to consume specific television content.     

戏剧化叙事:湖南卫视《绝对忠诚》的新闻舆论引导策略

湖南卫视新闻大片《绝对忠诚》聚焦科学家和军人的先进事迹,以现象级电视新闻新模式的典型个案,一度引人关注。它大胆采用“戏剧化”的电视叙事,通过戏剧情景的设计、戏剧悬念的营造、戏剧冲突的实现,从而增强信息表达的趣味性和传播力,成为地方电视新闻舆论引导的成功范例。     

Censorship and Scarcity

This article presents a case study on how goods scarcity, both natural and artificially created, was used along with censorship to control the Portuguese public's access to information during the 1930s and 1940s. Even though the dictatorship that ruled Portugal from 1933 relied on a censorship apparatus that prevented the publication and broadcast of many pieces of national and international news, the research presented in this article demonstrates how the regime took advantage of the Spanish Civil War and World War II to increase restrictions on the circulation of information, justifying this through the artificially created scarcity of paper and radio frequencies. Furthermore, this article also describes how a third type of scarcity—that of electricity—also restricted listeners' access to radio broadcasts, which led many Portuguese to make sacrifices in order to listen to updated news.     

Correlations of Media Habits Across Time,Generations, and Media Modalities

This study investigates media uses and preferences across two generations and across television and video games. Path analyses using data from 335 families show that the number of hours of television viewed by the first generation (parents at age 30) positively predicts the amount of television use by their offspring in the second generation 18 years later, as well as their own amount of television viewing at that time. The analyses also show that the amount of video game playing among offspring is significantly related to their own as well as their parents' concurrent TV use. While there is no similar longitudinal correlation between a preference for violent television by parents at age 30 and that of their offspring 18 years later, parents' violent television preferences at age 48 are positively correlated with their offspring's concurrent preference for violent television content. Additionally, the violent television preferences of offspring are positively correlated with their own preferences for violent video games. These effects were found while controlling for SES, intellectual achievement, and offspring gender. These results suggest that the amount of time devoted to media use and preferences for violent media generalize across media modalities and are transmitted across generations.     

Multitasking With Television Among Adolescents

Using Ecological Momentary Assessment, we explored predictors of adolescents' television (TV) multitasking behaviors. We investigated whether demographic characteristics (age, gender, race/ethnicity, and maternal education) predict adolescents' likelihood of multitasking with TV. We also explored whether characteristics of the TV-multitasking moment (affect, TV genre, attention to people, and media multitasking) predict adolescents' likelihood of paying primary versus secondary attention to TV. Demographic characteristics do not predict TV multitasking. In TV-multitasking moments, primary attention to TV was more likely if adolescents experienced negative affect, watched a drama, or attended to people; it was less likely if they used computers or video games.     

Preempting Dissent: The Politics of an Inevitable Future,by Greg Elmer and Andy Opel

This paper discusses the role of television in the lives of the residents of a public shelter for homeless men in New York City. Participant observation and informal interviewing support a detailed account of the ways and means of television watching in two of the shelter's recreation rooms. It shows that, over and above what is actually on TV, television as a cultural object is used by certain groups of homeless individuals to reflect and reinforce status differences and social boundaries between them. This finding suggests that the consumption of culture, well understood as part of the process of social distinction among the middle and upper classes, can perform a similar role among those at the bottom of the social structure as well.     

TV and the iPad: How the Tablet is Redefining the Way We Watch

The tablet computer offers options for streaming TV programming that potentially alters viewing behaviors compared to the traditional television set, yet there is a dearth of research related to this viewing alternative. This study uses a national sample of adult iPad owners to investigate the tablet's role as a TV. The frameworks of continuity-discontinuity, use-diffusion, and attention and absorption to programming are applied to uncover where the tablet fits into the current repertoire of viewing devices, and how individuals are engaging with traditional TV programming through it. Results show that overall, the tablet's functionality as a TV can lead to experiential differences.     

An Audio-Visual Approach to the Spanish Transition

Tele-revista was a biweekly Swiss television broadcast for Spanish immigrants living in Switzerland. It dealt with labour and migration-related issues in Switzerland, information about Spanish cultural manifestations, political rights and interviews with committed immigrants and key figures of Spanish politics in transit on Swiss soil. First aired in 1973, in the final years of General Franco's authoritarian regime, the TV magazine, initially broadcast on the three Swiss TV channels, is an unique source of the Spanish transition to democracy, seen through the eyes of Swiss TV-makers with the collaboration of some Spanish journalists. Tele-revista was aimed for a better integration of Spaniards within Swiss society, who were considered worse integrated than the Italians. The paper pursues to present a general portrayal of the broadcast with a special attention to the years of the Spanish transition to democracy by means of focussing on the information about social, cultural and political issues.     

James W. Seiler of the American Research Bureau

This article explores the contributions of one of the pioneers of ratings research, James W. Seiler, the founder of the American Research Bureau (ARB), the forerunner of Arbitron. Seiler and his small management team filled a small but productive window of time as the youthful ARB rode the crest of a giddy but short-lived success during the ‘50s and early ‘60s. The ARB was responsible for a number of leaps in product design-including popularizing the diary method, first for television and then radio, extending the number of weeks of measurement from one to four, measuring all U.S. T.V. markets at the same time (known as sweeps, which was to lead to first extended measurement of TV viewing beyond metropolitan areas), and using the first meter to capture audience viewing in real time (called Arbitron). It emerged as the key competitor against the Nielsen service in the battle to measure the local market for television until it withdrew from TV measurement in the ‘90s. Arbitron's success led it to monopolize the measurement of radio audiences, a position it currently holds.     

PUBLIC PERCEPTIONS OF TELEVISION INFLUENCE AND OPINIONS ABOUT CENSORSHIP IN SINGAPORE

It is a common assumption that in many countries mass mediacensorship is imposed by an authoritarian government on an unwillingpublic. This study examines public opinion about televisioncensorship in the island nation of Singapore. More specifically,we tested the third-person effect hypothesis, which suggeststhat people expect media content to have more negative influenceon others than on themselves, and that some support for censorshipis based on that perceptual bias. Data for the study came from face-to-face interviews with 506randomly selected Singaporeans who evaluated ten categoriesof ‘sensitive’ television content. Results revealed(1) a substantial perceptual bias in all content categories;(2) generally strong opinion favoring censorship of televisioncontent; and (3) a significant relationship between these twofactors, suggesting that people may support censorship of mediain part because of a tendency to overestimate its negative influence.     

Does TV Viewing Cultivate Meritocratic Beliefs? Implications for Life Satisfaction

The purpose of this article was to explore the cultivation effects of television viewing on meritocratic belief systems (particularly, system justification) and ultimately on perceived life satisfaction. Results of a cross-sectional survey (N = 276) reveal that genre-specific TV viewing cultivates system-justifying beliefs. More specifically, findings suggest that heavy viewing of competition-based reality TV viewing shapes viewers' economic system-justifying beliefs (i.e., the belief that the economic system is fair and legitimate, rewarding those who put in the effort and hard work). Economic system justifying beliefs, in turn, were shown to enhance viewers' perceived life satisfaction.     

Cases of Censorship in Public Libraries: Loudoun County,VA

ABSTRACT

In 1998, a group of adult library patrons and individuals in Loudoun County, Virginia, brought a suit against library trustees, board members, and the director of the county’s public library, claiming that the library’s use of Internet blocking software was an infringement on their First Amendment rights, leading to the federal court case Mainstream Loudoun v. Board of Trustees of the Loudoun County Library (1998). Using an in-depth case study approach and going beyond a review of the court documents, the author uses a series of qualitative interviews with individuals connected to the court case to gather more in-depth information regarding events surrounding this case of censorship in public libraries and investigate the phenomenon of librarians acting as censors themselves.     

Underneath the Red Carpet: Government Intervention in the Spanish Movie Industry

Despite its glamour and elevated social status, the movie industry receives much assistance from governments around the world. Governments mainly use both direct (subsidies and tax credits) and indirect (screen quotas or censorship) tools to help their own domestic motion picture industries. This article presents evidence of an indirect government intervention in the Spanish movie industry. In 1999, the Spanish government mandated that operating TV networks invest 3% of their receipts on the production of movies in the Spanish language. Using a new dataset of Spanish movies produced between 2000 and 2008, this article studies the empirical relation between TV network participation on movie production and box office success. Private TV network participation (as opposed to public networks) through production (and not distribution) was found to be associated with higher box office revenues and gross profitability rates, even after controlling for movie production budgets.     

Public trust: a comprehensive investigation on perceived media credibility in China

The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive investigation on perceived media credibility in China. In order to assess people's attitudes toward six media formats (television [TV], newspapers, radio, magazines, websites, and mobile devices), a series of surveys were conducted with a random sample of 5807 residents in 10 cities in China. Findings indicated that Chinese respondents perceived TV to be the most credible among all media and that TV was rated as more credible than newspapers. In addition, two official mouthpieces, China Central Television and the People's Daily, were both perceived to be highly credible. But readership in general was a nonfactor in terms of credibility. These findings challenged conventional thinking on media credibility. Implications and directions for future research are discussed.