Presidential television advertising and public policy priorities, 1952–2000

Do presidential candidates adapt their spot messages to the public's interests? This study conducts a computer content analysis of the texts of presidential television spots from 1952–2000. Public opinion poll data on the most important issues for voters, in each campaign, are used to structure the searches. The extent to which candidate spot messages conform to the public issue agenda is determined. Democrats’ and challengers’ spot messages are significantly more aligned with the public policy priorities than Republicans or incumbents. There is no significant difference between the correlations for winners versus losers. Finally, in 5 of the 13 elections there is a significant relationship between the issues covered by the two candidates. Clearly, some candidates are better at adapting their television messages to voters and in some elections the candidates tend to discuss the same policy issues.     

The birth of the tenth presidential library: The Bush presidential materials project, 1993–1994

The Bush Presidential Library and Museum, the tenth Presidential library, will be built on the campus of Texas A&M University between 1995 and 1997 and administered by the National Archives. It will be the archival depository for all of George Bush's Vice-Presidential and Presidential records and memorabilia as well as voluminous personal papers dealing with his life before and after his service in the White House. Every Presidential library undergoes an evolution from a Presidential materials project to a fully functioning facility, and the Bush Library currently is in its earliest period of development. The Bush Presidential Materials Project is systematically processing President Bush's records and museum objects for exhibit when the library opens to the public in 1997. The Bush Library will be the most highly computerized Presidential library to date, with automated systems, including an optical scanner for documents, facilitating archival processing and reference services.     

The evolution of television: 1944–1948

In the Summer of 1960 issue of the Journal of Broadcasting (Volume IV, Number 3) appeared the first in a series of excerpts from the official records of the Federal Commications Commission relating to broadcasting. It outlined the evolution of television from 1927 through 1943. Below, this history is carried through fiscal 1948, the year that television broadcasting took its first giant jump in number of stations, number of receivers, and number of problems. At the end of this period, television was poised at the edge of the “freeze” Following 1948, Annual Reports of the Commission become more readily available (as contrasted to the bare handful of copies of the 1944 Report in dog‐eared existence), as do broadcasters and others who lived through and are familiar with subsequent events.

The Journal is hopeful that these verbatim excerpts from official Annual Reports of the FCC will be of use to researchers, and of interest and value to the Journal's entire readership. As the introduction to the first installment said, “From them we may, with some confidence in factual accuracy, examine the fascinating panorama of the growth of a great American industry . . . .”     

The evolution of television: 1927–1943

The fact that not everyone may like a given television program isn't news; but the fact that the demographic characteristic of race is associated with selective liking and disliking of network television programs that were designed to appeal to a “mass” audience may be surprising. The following article aroused a great deal of heated discussion when an early version was presented at the 1965 meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism, and should do so again after publication in these pages. James W. Carey is Research Assistant Professor in the College of Journalism and Communications at the University of Illinois.     

Negro use of television and newspapers for political information, 1952–1964

An almost unheralded, but very important, communications phenomenon of the past couple of decades is the massive shift of Negroes from a “low media use”; pattern to a “high television use”; pattern for information gaining activity. The development is particularly clear with respect to the obtaining of political information by Negroes, as is shown in this secondary analysis of four Survey Research Center national probability samples, from 1952 through 1964. Maxwell McCombs, formerly on the faculty of UCLA, is presently assistant professor in the School of Journalism at the University of North Carolina.     

From Odessa to Odessa: Russian-Jewish Periodicals of Ukraine, 1860–2000

SUMMARY

Jewish periodicals have been published in Ukraine, in Russian and Ukrainian, over a 140-year time span. They are systematically described here, starting with the first such journal, Razsviet (Rassvet; Odessa, 1860–61), with accompanying bibliographical analysis. The central part of the article is a table noting all 311 periodicals' characteristics, including titles, cities and dates of publication, main features, and/or subtitles. Their stages of development, regional distribution, and languages of publication are reviewed. It is noteworthy that at the end of 2000, close to 100 Jewish newspapers, magazines, almanacs, and bulletins were active in the republic. The progress of the Jewish press continues in both quantity and quality.     

Apolitical politics: GOP efforts to foster identification from Latinos, 1984–2000

The growth and youth of the U.S. Latino population at the close of the 20^th century makes them a desired constituency for both major political parties. Intriguingly, the party organization which has long resisted the recognition of internal voting blocs—the GOP—allocated unprecedented resources between 1980 and 2000 to inspire identification from Latinos. This study investigates the nature of these invitations. Specifically, it reveals how a party, whose organizational identity opposes acknowledging individuals as ethnic group members, appeals to an ethnic group. By examining (a) English and Spanish language television advertisements and (b) elite interview data with Republican Latino strategists, we argue that these ads depict satisfied Latino citizens, emphasize Latino family connections, and eschew traditional political issues. These identification strategies are notable for they may have considerable effects on the American polity at the dawn of, and well into, the 21^st century.     

"The Farmer's Friend": Radio Comes to Rural America, 1920–1927

Nowhere did the coming of broadcasting have more social impact than in America's rural areas. With radio, farm families that were once isolated by vast distances and poor roads were brought into immediate and continuous contact with the rest of the nation. The United States Department of Agriculture was quick to seize the potential of the new medium and began producing weather forecasts, market reports, and other agricultural programming at an early date. Commercial interests also built stations and designed programming to serve the rural audience. This article examines the arrival of radio on America's farms during broadcasting's earliest years, from the introduction of radio in 1920 to the passage of the Radio Act of 1927.     

Audiences for crime media 1946–91: A historical approach to reception studies

The present paper argues that audience reception studies have tended to be ahistorical, neglecting consideration of the ways in which audiences’ orientation to media may have changed over the decades. The paper explores the potential of combining oral history methods with reception studies, and addresses some of the difficulties which arise. An apparently simple way to introduce a historical perspective is attempted by including audience age as a central part of an empirical research design. By analysing a series of focus group discussions in which people respond to crime media from different points over the postwar period, the concept of age is unpacked in terms of generation and life course factors, and these are shown to influence reception of crime media from both the present and the past. Generation and life course, together with gender, also affect people's positioning in society in relation to real‐world crime, and this too affects the reception of crime media. The paper concludes by suggesting three ways in which audiences may have changed over the postwar period in terms of their interpretive frames for making sense of crime media, namely the frames of personal relevance, realism and moral relativism.     

Public service broadcasting,children’s television,and market failure: The case of the United Kingdom

Domestically produced children’s television is frequently highlighted as both an area of market failure, and also as an area where children’s changing consumption habits necessitate new and different ways of thinking about funding children’s content across a range of platforms. In the light of a recent U.K. proposal to set up a Public Service Content Fund to support “genres” under threat, including children’s programming, this article considers how you fund diverse high-quality children’s content in a more challenging media environment where children’s content is arguably still a market failure “genre.” The first part of the article provides context by outlining the market failure characteristics of children’s content as a framework for analyzing the validity of market failure arguments across a range of platforms. It then investigates the causes of perceived market failure in the U.K. children’s television production market. The final part examines the implications of recent U.K. policy responses to provision for children that seek to address market failure through (1) the possible introduction of a contestable fund for public service content; (2) more stringent obligations on the British Broadcasting Corporation; and (3) the re-imposition of quotas on commercially funded public service broadcastings (ITV, Channel 4, Five). Drawing on regulatory and stakeholder responses, it concludes that attempts to overcome market failure in U.K. children’s television appear unsuited for funding the longer-term curation, distribution, and discovery of new types of content on platforms other than broadcasting.     

Counting the house in public television: A history of ratings use, 1953–1980

This study explores the evolution, diffusion and application of audience research in public television from its origins through the 1970s, the formative period for the system. Shifts in funding structures for public TV and the rise of cable and satellite competition are reflected in the changing practice of such research.     

A new approach to the metric of journals’ scientific prestige: The SJR indicator

A size-independent indicator of journals’ scientific prestige, the SCImago Journal Rank (SJR) indicator, is proposed that ranks scholarly journals based on citation weighting schemes and eigenvector centrality. It is designed for use with complex and heterogeneous citation networks such as Scopus. Its computation method is described, and the results of its implementation on the Scopus 2007 dataset is compared with those of an ad hoc Journal Impact Factor, JIF(3y), both generally and within specific scientific areas. Both the SJR indicator and the JIF distributions were found to fit well to a logarithmic law. While the two metrics were strongly correlated, there were also major changes in rank. In addition, two general characteristics were observed. On the one hand, journals’ scientific influence or prestige as computed by the SJR indicator tended to be concentrated in fewer journals than the quantity of citation measured by JIF(3y). And on the other, the distance between the top-ranked journals and the rest tended to be greater in the SJR ranking than in that of the JIF(3y), while the separation between the middle and lower ranked journals tended to be smaller.     

Models,methods, and assumptions: The usefulness of a multi‐method approach to the examination of influence in TV pricing

The author explores the use of different mathematical modelsin considering influences on prices of television advertising rates and concludes that significant variability exists between models due to assumptions and level of data employed. The author argues that existing research on advertising price influences should be reconsidered in like of the differences among models, assumptions, and data used.     

The studio model: Should publishing follow Hollywood’s approach to the creative process?

Publishers have long outsourced many parts of their operations. Should they go the whole way and outsource the whole of the process, becoming more like a Hollywood studio: “a bank with a sales force?” A number of senior publishers surveyed responded to this proposition. Positive and negative aspects of outsourcing can be tested, suggesting considerable benefits possible from increased outsourcing of creative talent.