Give the People What They Want: A Content Analysis of FM Radio Station Home Pages

This content analysis of home pages from 365 randomly selected FM station Web sites examined how the industry is using the Web to deliver content. Results show three types of information are most prevalent: details about station events, disk jockey biographies, and contact information for the station. This is significantly different from the type of content listeners have said they desire in previous survey research. However, differences in the presence of station promotional content can be predicted based on expected differences in the demographics and psychographics of the station's target audience.     

Late night with David letterman: A humorous balance

Balance theory was employed to explain the humor of Late Night with David Letterman. Results showed that the length of a narrative and of the initial audience response were significant predictors of the number of references made to that narrative. Amount of audience response to a reference varied significantly with the ordinal number of that reference.     

Through the ‘I’ of the beholder: A rationale for physicalization in performance of narratives

This article presents a rationale for physicalization in performance of narrative prose based on the literary convention of “point of view.” It explores a variety of narrative voices and attempts to illustrate, through example, how narrators rely on both imitation and narration to present story to audience.     

Stanton's “Solitude of Self” as Public Confession

Elizabeth Cady Stanton opened her now famous “Solitude of Self” by asserting her desire to make manifest the “individuality of each human soul.” Using Stanton's attempt to display the human soul as a case study, I consider in this essay the capacities of language to disclose the self. I argue that, for Stanton, self-disclosure is fundamentally performative: The “Solitude of Self” evokes the “inner-being we call ourself” through a reliance on, and a subsequent violation of, a distinctively narrative logic. As this violation takes from the audience the sense of order that the narrative had theretofore provided, it puts the audience in a position where they, now shorn of narrative and the order it provided, can experience firsthand the solitude of self.     

电视民生新闻:在故事化的叙述中坚守新闻的真实性

故事化的叙事方式广泛运用在电视民生新闻中,这种叙述方式可以拉近媒体和受众之间的距离,使民生新闻特有的亲民效果得到延伸。随着这种叙述方式的广泛应用,电视民生新闻中出现了一些因故事化而导致新闻失真的种种现象。本文试澄清电视民生新闻中故事化叙述方式的界定,并分析故事化的叙述方式在电视民生新闻的运用中存在的问题,探讨了电视民生新闻如何在故事化的叙述方式中坚守新闻的真实性问题。     

Narrative Engagement and Vicarious Interaction with Multiple Characters

This study investigates how audience members relate to and vicariously interact with multiple characters while viewing a narrative. Under the framework of the theory of situation models, we applied a real-time thought-listing technique that incorporated Twitter and focused on three debuting TV dramas to explore how the participants followed multiple characters while watching prime-time television dramas. We examined 3,274 tweets across the three TV series and found that monitoring a greater diversity of characters is associated with an increased number of questions asked and more accurate predictions of future events. The participants who made more accurate predictions had higher narrative engagement. In addition, the participants who had more thoughts about the self tracked a greater diversity of characters and made more accurate predictions about the plot. The results are discussed in terms of the developing literature on narratives in mass communication and entertainment research.     

“Openness through Sound”: Dualcasting on Irish LGBT Radio

This article explores how Ireland’s first LGBT radio station, Open FM, attempted to offer LGBT radio in a heteronormative media landscape. It uses semi-structured interviews with two of the stations founders as well as posts from online LGBT message bulletin boards to argue how Open FM ultimately became ambivalent about its LGBT status and adopted a dualcasting strategy. Despite its ambitions to be a community-led radio station for Ireland's LGBT community, the dualcasting strategy of the station framed many of its endeavors between the mainstream standards of radio broadcasting and the community of interest that their licence claimed to serve.     

Doubling Down: President Barack Obama’s Doubled Persona after the Zimmerman Verdict

This article analyzes President Barack Obama’s remarks following the acquittal of George Zimmerman on the charge of murdering Trayvon Martin. Speaking directly to, for, or about African Americans would lead some to accuse him of speaking primarily as a black man, while ignoring the idea of race would lead some to accuse him of failing to acknowledge its omnipresence in American life. To manage these constraints, the president employed what we have termed a doubled persona; that is, he enacted two different speaking personae and envisioned a distinct audience persona for each speaking persona: He spoke both as a black president and as a president who is black.     

Tuning In to Radio: Promoting Audience Transference During Frequency Shifts

This investigation explores the interaction between radio listenership, station attributes, branding and promotional strategies, and their impact on total audience and target audience transference during frequency switching. A multistation, single market switch in frequencies serves as the focus of this case study analysis. Although the enhancement or deterioration of signal strength is a primary contributor, stations whose formats had the greatest competition within the market and who had highly accurate and accessible Web sites did the best job of product differentiation through station branding and were most effective in maintaining and, in some cases, increasing audience share.     

Different Standards: Engineers’ Expectations and Listener Adoption of Digital and FM Radio Broadcasting

As digital radio broadcasting enters its third decade of operation, few would argue that it has met all expectations expressed at the time of its launch in the mid-1990s. Observers are now more circumspect, with views divided on the pace of transition to an all-digital future. In exploring this mismatch between expectation and actuality, this article considers the introduction of FM radio in the 1950s. It too was expected to replace its forebear (AM) but, like digital radio, its adoption by listeners was slower than anticipated. An examination of published literature, in particular engineering and technical documents, reveals a number of similarities in the development of digital radio and FM. Assumptions about listeners’ needs and preferences appear to have been based on little actual audience research and, with continual reference in the literature to the supposed deficiencies of the predecessor technology, suggest an emphasis in decision making on the technical qualities of radio broadcasting over an appreciation of actual audience preferences.     

Local Radio Audiences in Iran: An Analysis of Ardebilian People's Trust in and Satisfaction with “Sabalan” Radio

There are numerous local radio stations across Iran. Considering the ethnic, linguistic, and cultural characteristics of their audiences, local stations endeavor to produce and broadcast diverse programs. One local station is “Sabalan” situated in Ardebil province in northwest Iran. Since the audience of this station speaks the same language as the inhabitants of the neighboring countries of Azerbaijan and Turkey, whether Sabalan can attract and satisfy its audience becomes significant. The paper is the result of a research project done in relation to the extent to which the Ardebilian audience is satisfied by Sabalan and trusts its programs. The findings reveal that the audience is less than satisfied with Sabalan and has almost no trust in the news, information, and programs. The reasons they mention for their attitude are: censorship of the news and little reflection of reality, lack of respect for indigenous culture and language, and broadcasting too many programs in Persian.     

A Case Study of Edwin Howard Armstrong's Public Relations Campaign for Frequency Modulation

Edwin Howard Armstrong is commonly remembered as the inventor of frequency modulation (FM). There are those, however, who dispute this claim and assert that Armstrong's legacy is a work of fiction rather than history. This study examines the extensive public relations campaign on behalf of both FM and Armstrong from 1940 until after his death. This thesis is a case study of this campaign for the purpose of understanding the narrative presented to the American public.     

Z-Radio,Boston: Teen Journalism,Political Engagement,and Democratizing the Airwaves

This article analyzes a youth organization's struggle to start a low-watt community radio station. The project was envisioned as a way to encourage at-risk youth to become media producers and gain technical and communication skills. It was also seen as a medium through which to communicate about important social and political issues affecting the station's predominantly low-income and minority constituency—concerns not prominently covered in the commercial media. Like hundreds of US urban communities excluded from operating low power FM stations under current FCC regulations, this group initiated a 100 milliwatt AM station with hopes of eventually becoming a 100 watt FM station if FCC regulations were to change. Funding, organizational, logistical, and regulatory issues are discussed, along with obstacles and successes of this initiative and the potential for such programs to engage youth in larger issues of democracy and non-commercial expression.     

The Cultivation of Idealistic Moral Expectations: The Role of Television Exposure and Narrative Engageability

The aim of this study was to gain a better understanding of how fictional television shapes people’s expectations about the moral workings of the real world, relying on cultivation theory and models of narrative and moral effects as theoretical frameworks. Using a cross-sectional sample of the general German adult population, this study investigated the relationship between television viewing time (overall television and three genres—crime drama, medical drama, sitcoms) and narrative engageability with three idealistic moral expectations (just world beliefs, professional altruism of doctors, tolerance of otherness). Although genre viewing was not related to idealistic moral expectations, overall television viewing and narrative engageability proved to have consistent positive relationships. Results indicate that television viewing, the audience’s eagerness to engage with narratives (narrative engageability), and moral expectations about the real world are intertwined and mutually dependent.     

A Library in the Metro Station

This paper discusses the results of a survey of patrons of the Metro McGill Library, a facility opened on December 14, 1981, on the pedestrian overpass of the McGill metro station in Montreal. The study shows that this convenient library attracted 5,000 new library users in one year's time.     

Predicting Media Appeal From Instinctive Moral Values

Zillmann's moral sanction theory defines morality subcultures for entertainment as groups of media viewers who evaluate character actions with shared value systems. However, the theory provides no a priori means to identify these shared value systems. The model of intuitive morality and exemplars incorporates a theoretical framework for identifying and testing the factors from which these shared value systems emerge. This study applies the model's framework, based on 5 “moral domains” from moral foundations theory, to test the influence of shared value systems on character perceptions and narrative appeal. A within-subject experiment varied violation of these five domains (care, fairness, ingroup loyalty, authority, and purity) and narrative resolutions (positive or negative outcomes) in 10 short narrative scenarios. The 5 domains predicted character perceptions and narrative appeal. The results are discussed in terms of the utility of these domains for understanding the reciprocal relationship between audience values and media response.     

The comparative “look‐up” ability of script readers on television

The authors present a detailed analysis of the major factors (sales price, net broadcast revenue, average daily audience size, program expenses vs. station profitability, and sales price) which help define a station's economic value. One major conclusion is that higher program expenditures appear to correlate with higher station profits (and economic value). Mr. Blau is a doctoral candidate in mass communications at Indiana University, while Drs. Johnson and Ksobiech are associate and assistant professors, respectively, in that university's department of telecommunications. The study was conducted with the support of grants from the NAB and an Indiana University Faculty, Grant‐in‐Aid. Naturally, the opinions and other content do not necessarily reflect the position or policy of those institutions, and no official endorsement should be inferred.     

Finding Power of Hidden Radio Audiences in the Fields of Guatemala

This paper provides a case study of a radio station in Guatemala notable for making programming decisions to serve rural audiences. Sometimes these broadcasters broke with accepted practice and provided programs that some listeners might consider controversial. However, the case study reveals these programs were pitched directly at an underserved niche in the audience of these broadcasters: low-income listeners from indigenous groups. This paper will document the history of these trends and discuss some of the methods of how these broadcasters serve this underserved audience.     

Discursive texts,reflexive audiences: Global trends in television news texts and audience reception

This study examines the process of media globalization at the level of meaning generation (by television news texts) and interpretation (by audiences) based on the analysis of news‐texts and focus groups from four countries. It is suggested that the narrative of television news is discursive: it provides a specific vision of cultural “others”. At the audience level there is the emergence of a global culture of critical media consumption. This reflexive mode is born of a familiarity with the narrative conventions of the genre and the institutional imperatives of the media industries.     

基于社会符码理论的科学中心展品及其科技叙事结构分析

目前,学术界对于科学中心展示的探讨多集中在观众的满意度及其学习成效上,但对展示的概念以及如何进行科技阐释作为一种既定的程式却少有研究。因此,本文从伯恩斯坦的社会符码理论出发,对科学中心内展品以及贯穿其中的科技叙事结构进行探讨,形成科学展品的深奥、隐喻、公共及神秘(反思)的符码框架和包括技术、历史、社会文化及哲学四大层面的科技叙事结构,以期从展示本身的角度给科学中心提供可行的理论框架。