Valuing the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation

Over recent years the Canadian government has struggled to determine how muchmoney should be spent on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC), itspublic service broadcaster. At the same time, regulators and CBC managementhave struggled with what types of programming services it should provide.Traditionally, the citizen's role in public broadcasting decision making hasbeen limited to an occasional submission at a hearing or a response to apublic opinion survey. However, willingness-to-pay stated preference choiceexperiments could be an effective, low cost means of obtaining more detailedcitizen's input. Here, we report findings from a national survey of Canadianhouseholds in which contingent valuation and choice experiment data are usedto estimate use and non-use values of the various programming servicesprovided by the CBC. The results are used to address policy and programmingissues facing the organization.     

Competition,Concentration and Diversity in European Television Markets

This study investigates how competition, concentration and public broadcasters influence diversity of programme supply in European television markets. It focuses on free, national generalist channels; studies programmes as provided throughout the day; and tests hypotheses with data on Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the U.K. for the late 1980s and 1990s. It concludes that competition is moderate in most markets. Under these conditions, competition and concentration contribute to a diverse supply of programmes that mirrors audience demand, while public broadcasters increase diversity of supply above competitive market levels.     

Optimal Pricing of Museum Admission

This paper examines the impact of free admission on museum revenue and evaluates the desirability, from an income maximizing perspective, of an additional free day. The model capitalizes on diverse audience composition. Regression analysis is used to estimate marginal shop and restaurant revenue for both art patrons and marginal consumers. Empirical estimation shows that an additional free day would not be profitable. A theoretical model which specifies crowding and museum recognition effects is provided as an appendix.     

Willingness to pay: individual or household?

This paper considers how respondents model the open-ended willingness to pay question, what is your maximum willingness to pay? In the specific context of valuing Irish public service broadcasting, respondents were asked a follow-up question in order to explore whether the initial response was an individual or household bid. The results suggest the presence of significant ambiguity in how responses to standard willingness to pay questions should be interpreted and aggregated.     

The welfare and equity implications of competition in television broadcasting: the role of viewer tastes

This paper studies the behavior of commercial television broadcasters in markets where the distribution of viewer tastes varies. Our results show that a highly “clustered” market enables the broadcaster to offer a program of a popular type but with lower quality (i.e., lower production values) than is the case when viewers have more diffused tastes. We find that viewer equity in the television market (i.e., the percentage of all potential viewers who have at least one program they consider worth watching) and viewer welfare (i.e., total consumer surplus) may not coincide. Depending upon the distribution of viewer tastes and the cost of providing quality programming, the number of broadcasters required to fully cover the market to avoid market failure may be greater than the number of broadcasters that produce greater viewer welfare. The study suggests that regulatory bodies need to pay attention to the distribution pattern of viewer tastes and the broadcasters' desire for return on programming investments, since both factors have important implications for competitive outcomes and viewer well-being.     

Arts sponsorship and the state of the city

This paper explores the correlation between metropolitan social and economic conditions and corporate arts support in the United States. It is hypothesized that the transition from a manufacturing sector economy to an advanced service sector economy is an important local factor for the increase in corporate arts support.By panel analysis, in eleven metropolitan areas between 1977 and 1991 changes in corporate arts support have been correlated with changes in social and economic conditions, i.e., service sector and manufacturing sector employment, service sector and manufacturing sector income, population's educational attainment, and the degree of dominance by the leading local arts supporting industry.Corporate arts support is higher in metropolitan areas where the population is better educated (=+0.60), the local service sector generates more income (=+0.37) and the local manufacturing sector generates less income (=–0.22).Corporations from the manufacturing sector are mostly indifferent towards arts support. In contrast, corporations from the service sector are supportive of the local arts but they also respond swiftly to a loss in their earnings by discontinuing their arts support.     

ART-SCIENCE

In this paper we examine the emergent field of art-science, part of a heterogeneous space of overlapping interdisciplinary practices at the intersection of the arts, sciences and technologies. Art-science is often thought to exemplify Nowotny et al.'s (2001) ‘mode-2’ knowledge production; indeed the institutions supporting art-science invariably claim that art-science contributes to the ‘contextualization of science’ by rendering scientific and technical knowledge more accessible and accountable to its publics. Our argument, however, is that this approach fails to capture the ways in which art-science exhibits its own complex trajectories, which cannot be grasped in terms of an epochal transition in the mode of knowledge production. Drawing on ethnographic research on art-science practitioners and institutions in the USA, UK and Australia, our first aim is to indicate the heterogeneity of art-science by contrasting distinctive forms and genealogies of art-science. A second aim follows. Rather than simply multiplying the connections between science and its publics, we suggest that art-science is instructive in highlighting radically divergent conceptions and practices of publicness, and point to two such forms. We examine, first, the relations between science, art and the public in the UK from C. P. Snow's ‘two cultures’ essay to the activities of the Wellcome Trust and Arts Council England. In these developments, art that is in dialogue with science is conceived primarily as a means by which the (absent) public for science can be interpellated: science is understood as complete, and as needing only to be communicated or applied, while art provides the means through which the public can be assembled and mobilized on behalf of science. We contrast this with a novel institutional programme in art-science pedagogy at the University of California, Irvine: the Masters programme in Arts, Computation and Engineering (ACE). Through the contents of the ACE teaching programme and the case of an art-science project concerned with the measurement of air pollution by ACE faculty member Beatriz da Costa, and with reference to the work of Hannah Arendt and Barbara Cassin, we suggest that art-science can act not so much as a way of assembling a public for science, but as a public experiment.     

Determinants of Public Cultural Expenditures: An Exploratory Time Series Analysis for Austria

Austria calls itself a ``cultural nation' as the arts, the performing arts (theaters) and museums, in particular, play an important role in public debate. However, the question arises as to whether public cultural expenditures as an indication of the significance of cultural policy are really as important when compared to other policy fields as political parties and the government try to suggest. A time series of public cultural expenditures for the period from 1967 to 1998 is taken as a basis for testing econometrically whether public expenditures (measured primarily as the ratio to GDP) follow a growth path. Based on tests for the stationarity of the time series of cultural expenditures in Austria, there are empirical indications that cultural expenditures, gross domestic product (GDP) and the relative price index (GDP and government expenditures) are cointegrated. Further econometric estimations (error-correction models) show that cultural expenditures increase with growing GDP but are vulnerable to short term fluctuations. Additionally, ``Baumol's cost disease' adds to the long-term growth of cultural expenditures. In the past the growth path of cultural expenditures has been stable and independent of the ideology of ruling parties, the form of government and political business cycles.     

Empirical Evidence of a Decline in Repertory Diversity among American Opera Companies 1991/92 to 1997/98

Using data published by Opera America, this paperexamines the aggregate repertory of U.S.companies by calculating the total numberof companies and productions at six dates; thenumber of 20th century operas produced; theDiMaggio–Stenberg Index of conformity; andthe Herfindahl index of concentration. It is shownthat opera is a growth industry, butchanges in the character of repertory over timesuggest that since the early 1990s U.S.companies have been shifting their programming towarda more popular, less demandingrepertory. Presumably, this is done to ward offfinancial pressure.     

超大城市中的公共空间生活意象 ——夜市从纯商业向文创活力方向发展研究

中国城市的公共空间中一直存在群众自发形成商业活动的传统.在超大城市拥挤且有限的公共空间里,如何创造群众自发参与的公共空间,形成积极的城市生活意象,是值得深入思考的问题.中国有很多"草根夜市",是大城市作为"不夜城"的重要组成部分.但随着城市的发展,传统的夜市形式逐渐被取缔.以上海、武汉等超大城市为研究对象,调研夜市发展...     

杭州西湖“公园化”历史及文化变迁研究

杭州西湖是中国古代著名城市公共园林,简述西湖随着杭州城市发展,从城郊风景游览地到城市公共园林的发展过程。考虑地域自然人文历史背景,综合文献记载和地图资料,还原近代以来杭州西湖的三次\"公园化\"历史进程,即民国时期的湖城融合,1949年以后的人民公园化改造和21世纪初的公园城市建设。讨论了时代思想对公园内容和样貌的影响,以及在此过程中所表达出的文化倾向。探索当代\"公\"园的根本属性,思考公园城市建设的历史语境和理论意义。     

国家制度改革下的我国城市规划适应逻辑与路径

制度改革反映了公共部门与私人部门在城市建设事务中的角色与作用,继而影响城市规划技术与政策的制定。基于对国家制度改革进程的特征研究,分析了我国制度改革下的城市规划适应逻辑,认为国家制度差异下的中西方城市规划之间存在较大差异性。为适应"十九大"后新构建的国土空间规划体系,我国城市规划只有具备发展观、合作观与制度观,才能扮演好城乡建设中的公共服务与公共政策职能,高效推进城乡一体化统筹。     

National museums: To charge or not to charge?

This paper looks at the arguments for and against admission charges to national museums and provides some new evidence relating to the effects of charges. This debate is set in the context of the policy objective of access: the vast bulk of the population do not attend national museums and evidence on this and on the socioeconomic composition of those who attend is presented for Ireland.     

Expert Judgment Versus Public Opinion – Evidence from the Eurovision Song Contest

For centuries, there have been discussions as to whether only experts can judge the quality of cultural output, or whether the taste of the public also has merit. This paper tries to answer that question empirically, using national finals of the Eurovision Song Contest. We show that experts are better judges of quality in the sense that the outcome of finals judged by experts is less sensitive to factors unrelated to quality than the outcome of finals judged by public opinion. Yet, experts are not perfect; their judgment does still depend on such factors. This is also the case in the European finals of the contest.     

Public Orchestra Funding in Germany – An Empirical Investigation

In this paper, we describe the institutional framework in which heavy subsidization of German classical orchestras takes place and provide figures on the structure and the level of public support. Moreover, we derive and test various hypotheses concerning the political-economic determinants of public orchestra support. We analyze the political support-maximizing calculus of local politicians – the relevant decision-makers for orchestra subsidization in Germany. We find that public funding increases with increasing population; public debt and budget figures exert strong influences on the level of support. In addition, conservative and liberal politicians tend to support classical orchestras more than Social Democratic and Green politicians do.     

Public Library Fees in Germany

This paper studies the impact of different payment schemes for public library borrowings in Germany. The number of borrowings is directly related to the holdings and the financial means of a library. Per medium fees lower the number of borrowings. However, a fixed fee just reduces the number of users. As this is counterbalanced by an increase in borrowings per user, the net effect on total borrowings is zero or even positive. Offering an alternative to a yearly fee for those who borrow only few media does not change results. From that, we conclude that a fee mainly eliminates nominal users and increases the library's effort. JEL-Classification: H 40, H 52, L 32, Z11