Doctoral dissertations in radio and television

The perceived social realism of television series featuring families with children and adolescents was studied. For the two family series they watched the most, 460 2nd, 6th, and 10th graders indicated the percentage of real‐life American families they believed were like the television family on 13 different characteristics. Findings suggest that perceived social realism judgments are sensitive to content, as are developmental patterns in judgment. They further suggest that disparate findings among previous studies of age changes in perceived social realism may be explained by age, the content judged, the realism criterion used for judgment, and familiarity with both the content and its real‐life referents.     

Political party use of radio and television in the 1960 campaign

Although only about 1% of all broadcast revenues in 1960 could be attributed to time purchased for the Presidential election campaign, the total (close to $14 million) was enough to put a very‐large dent into political party treasuries. At the same time, broadcasting stations and networks reaped a quadrennial bonanza. The following article describes and discusses the trends in party expenditures for political broadcasting, as well as the regional distribution of the amount of broadcasting time purchased by the two major parties. It is primarily an analysis of the Federal Communications Commission's 1960 Survey of Political Broadcasting.     

论中国广电业的政府规制

中国广电传媒经济系统的进化对管理体制创新提出新的要求 ,按照市场经济原则和民主法制的要求 ,逐步建立中国广播电视事业的现代政府规制体制 ,是管理体制创新的必然选择 ,也是市场经济体制下保证我国广播电视事业健康发展和广播电视产业高效运行的制度保障。为了从理论上探索政府规制体制创新的途径 ,需要从政治学、经济学、法学角度探讨我国特有的制度环境下广电事业现代政府规制的法理依据和实现形式。本文首先从法理上探讨未来政府对广播电视事业的规制依据和职能定位 ,在此基础上揭示中国广播电视事业的政府规制目标和结构特征     

论西方广电传媒业的公共规制

本文通过对广播电视业的公共规制依据、西方广电传媒业的公共规制模式、西方广电传媒业的规制改革趋势的分析 ,力图从公共规制的角度来揭示西方现代广电传媒体制的多样性和普遍性 ,为我国的广电事业管理体制改革和广电事业公共规制理论的探索提供一些有益的启示。     

Research in radio,television, and film by graduate students in speech

Speech graduate students perform varied types of research in the radio‐television‐film field. An analysis of the nature of this research suggests some important conclusions.     

A model of social interaction phase II: Further tests in radio and television situations

The research reported here is part of programmatic effort to develop a more deductive and holistic transituational framework for systematically modeling the relationships among six major elements of social interaction. Phase II was designed to confirm the initial model and to ameliorate methodological flaws found in Phase I.     

Directions in television and aging research

Following from a summary review of television and aging research studies, methodological difficulties of past investigations and needed directions for future mass communication and aging research are discussed.     

Commercial television in Japan

Broadcasting trade papers in recent months have devoted an increasing amount of attention to the rapid strides being made by commercial television in various nations abroad. In this issue of the Journal, Richard Friedman presents an intensive analysis of commercial television in Japan, the result of several months' research in that country recently.     

Lying and deception detection in television families

This study explores the use of lying and lie‐detection among television families in situation comedies. The findings indicate that (a) lying was prevalent on these television shows; (b) lies to spare others were told most frequently; (c) the majority of lies went undetected; (d) the husband/father character told the most lies; (e) children were the most honest characters in situation comedies and (f) peripheral characters were the recipients of many lies. Two conclusions were drawn from these findings. First, this study gives insight into the content of family communication as presented on television. Secondly', the study suggests television families mirror real families with respect to family structure and the ability to detect deception.     

Public relations in educational television

This is the report of a limited inquiry into public relations activities of educational television stations, showing how educational broadcasters have at least one problem in common with their commercial brethren —namely, the need to publicize their efforts.     

Violence on television in Asia

Tan Yew Soon and Soh Yew Peng The Development of Singapore's Modern Media Industry Times Academic Press, Singapore 1994, pp. 263     

Diversity in local television news

This study was designed to determine if VCR satisfaction, VCR use, and interpersonal communication about VCRs are related to three functions: home entertainment, displacement, and social utility. A survey of VCR households yielded 338 responses. Differential patterns were found across the three functions.     

Children's expectations for television entertainment vs. television news events

Young children's limited ability to recognize and defend against commercial messages has led to numerous concerns about advertising that targets child‐viewers. Industry self‐regulation of child‐oriented advertising content is one response to those concerns. With the demise of the National Association of Broadcasters Code in 1982, guidelines maintained by the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU) of the National Council of Better Business Bureaus comprise the only industry‐wide self‐regulation. This study evaluates the extent of compliance with the CARU standards across a sample of over 10,000 ads directed to children. The results indicate a high overall rate of adherence to the guidelines. Two problem areas emerged which accounted for most of the violations observed: ads that featured premium offers, and ads for recorded telephone message services. The findings are discussed in terms of their implications for the child audience.     

The beginning television course

All too often, strong opinions are held without regard to detailed knowledge of the subject involved. Current controversies show that the question of course content in professional broadcasting education is no exception. Regardless of the viewpoint held, a supply of adequate data relevant to the question should be welcomed by all. The Journal undertakes to supply as much data as possible relevant to broadcasting education, the most recent example being Harold Niven's “Fourth Annual Survey of Colleges and Universities Offering Course Work in Radio and Television, 1958–1959”; published in the Fallissue.     

Viewing television talk shows

We examined how motivation, audience activity, and attitudes influenced the likelihood of watching societal‐issue and relational topics on television talk programs. Path analysis supported differences in ritualized and instrumental motives for watching talk shows. Information and exciting‐entertainment motivation predicted greater’ realism of, affinity with, involvement with, and intent to watch talk television. Pass‐time motivation predicted reduced affinity with and intent to watch talk television, and reduced likelihood of watching relational topics. Information motivation predicted greater likelihood of watching relational topics. We discussed these findings in light of the concept of audience activity.     

Antisocial behaviors in television entertainment: Trends and profiles

This study replicates the content analysis of antisocial acts on entertainment programming conducted by Greenberg and his colleagues in the mid 1970s. Our purpose is to determine if the frequency of antisocial behavior has changed. We found an overall rate of 42.1 antisocial acts per hour which is very similar to Greenberg's rate of 40.8 acts per hour. However, we found that the rate of verbal aggression had increased, especially on situation comedies and action/adventures programs.     

Program exclusivity and competition in the cable television industry

The authors argue that program exclusivity will be an important factor in the future of the cable television industry. They assert that prohibiting cable program exclusivity may limit the First Amendment rights of cable programmers and operators. The authors conclude that the best chance for increasing competition if program exclusivity continues is to increase the number of market participants.     

Market size and local television news judgment

The research explores market‐based difference in news judgment to determine whether content is affected by size. It concluded that size and available resources do not significantly affect the types of news stories presented in stations of different market size.