Expanding the Unidirectional View on Parental Television Mediation: Children’s Guidance of Their Parent’s Television Use

Compared to parental mediation research, much less is known about how children influence and guide their parents’ media use. This study examined whether children also mediate the television use of their parents. Measures of an existing television mediation scale were reversed to the perspective of the child guiding the parent’s television use. A sample of 187 parent-child dyads completed a cross-sectional survey in Flanders (Belgium). Factor analyses showed that the original subscales were reproduced with high internal validity. Both parents and children had congruent views about children’s television mediation; television mediation and children's restrictive mediation was positively associated with conflict in the family.     

Expanding Television’s Cultural Forum in the Digital Era: Prime Time Television,Twitter, and Black Lives Matter

Twitter updates and expands television’s cultural forum model by letting viewers speak to current events such as the Black Live Matter (BLM) movement. This article analyzes 1,985 tweets in response to three television episodes (Law & Order: SVU, The Good Wife, and Scandal) that dramatized BLM, and identifies five common themes in how viewers address these representations: thematic appropriateness, timing, producers’ qualifications, institutional critiques, and the purpose of entertainment television. This study concludes that Twitter facilitates a meta-commentary, which expands traditional discussions of entertainment programming, and that these programs transcend “mere” entertainment to become critiques of larger social movements.     

Gender and Emotion Stereotypes in Children’s Television

The purpose of the present study was to assess the prevalence of emotion stereotypes in children’s television programming, in both educational and non-educational programming. It was hypothesized that gender stereotypes of emotion would still be prevalent in both entertainment and educational programming, with females showing more fear and sadness and males showing more anger, and that all shows would have more male than female characters. A total of 8 children’s programs were included for analysis: 4 entertainment programs and 4 educational programs. Programs were coded for the total number of males and females and for the emotions displayed by each character: happiness, sadness, anger, and fear. Overall, the analyses revealed that the majority of shows still have more male than female characters. Males were found to portray more of all emotions than females. Educational programming did not differ much in the amount of stereotypical versus counter-stereotypical emotion portrayed. Entertainment programming showed a trend toward more counter-stereotyped emotions. Future research should explore the influence of viewing specific shows on young children’s current gender stereotypes to assess the immediate impact of such viewing.     

Television and Family Values: Was Dan Quayle Right?

In this article, we explore the extent to which heavy television viewers' beliefs about the real world are consistent with the most repetitive and overarching patterns that television presents, especially in its dramatic entertainment programs. We test the hypothesis (put forth by many besides Dan Quayle) that television encourages viewers to embrace alternatives to the traditional 2-parent family. For purposes of conceptual clarity, we chose to focus on the question of illegitimacy and single parenthood, which is most directly related to the Murphy Brown controversy and is frequently touched on in many strands of political discourse. We reviewed previous research on television portrayal of the family and then used the 1988 and 1994 General Social Surveys (Davis & Smith, 1996) to assess relations between television viewing and judgments about illegitimacy and single parenthood. The data do not contradict Quayle's contention that television viewing is contributing to fraying of traditional family values.     

Live Reporting in Television News: Breaking News or Black Holes?

In the early days of television, it was thought that live coverage of news events would be extremely rare. Instead, live coverage has become pervasive. Results from this study showed that stations in sampled-markets aired more stories containing a live element than they aired standard reporter packages. Most of the time, there was no apparent journalistic justification for going live, adding evidence to the contention that technology drives journalism in television newsrooms today.     

Television and Movie Viewing Predict Adults’ Romantic Ideals and Relationship Satisfaction

The current study examined the associations between television and movie use, romantic ideals (belief in love conquers all and soul mates), and relationship satisfaction among adults who were currently in romantic relationships. Participants were 306 individuals aged 18–64. They were asked about their media use, their romantic beliefs, and their current relationship. In addition to overall time spent watching television and movies, seven specific genres were measured. Results indicated that viewing each genre of television and movie analyzed (including relationship reality TV, TV drama, TV comedy, soap opera, and romantic movie) was positively associated with romantic ideals. The results for television were not in the hypothesized direction or consistent with prior studies. Television drama and romantic movie viewing were the strongest predictors of belief in love conquers all and relationship satisfaction, whereas soap opera viewing was the strongest predictor of belief in soul mates. None of these associations were moderated by age or relationship length. Mediation analyses also showed that specific genres of viewing were positively associated with relationship satisfaction via romantic ideals. The implications of viewing television and movies for adults’ romantic relationships are discussed.     

That’s Entertainment: Crafting a Creative Ecology within Public Television

ABSTRACT

Television has gone through a period of rapid disruption in the last few years. New technologies, increased globalization, shifting demographics, and evolving consumer demand have impelled widespread change to business models. Consequently, Broadcasters have been forced to re-examine their approaches to creativity and ideation including capacities and enabling methods. Following analysis of recorded interviews with key personnel behind three recent television productions a better understanding of the cultural ecology surrounding creativity was developed. Findings emphasized the decisive influence that internal sense of community, tacit realization practices, and quality leadership – all working together – play in delivering a distinctive production to a mass-market media audience.     

Making Sense of “Views” Culture in Television News Media in India

ABSTRACT

The initiation of economic reforms in the 1990s led to major recastings in the media-state-market relationship in India. Looking specifically at the television news media space, the age-old monopoly of the state broadcaster Doordarshan was challenged by the mushrooming of a host of private television news media. Private participation in the television news sector was in sync with the logic of market capitalism. Market-based news model radically altered the nature of production, representation and consumption of news. This paper makes an inquiry into one such predominant aspect of news production, the ascendancy of views/opinion based prime time programming in television news media, in contemporary India. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with journalists, the paper attempts to make sense of the reasons, the nature and significance and the likely impact of such programming on the nature of public discourse in India.     

Public Journalism Through the Lens: How Television Broadcasters Covered Campaign ‘96

Public journalism has had a less measurable impact in local television newsrooms than in newspapers. A study of 1996 election coverage found that broadcasters who committed to practice public journalism devoted more airtime to policy issues and less to election polls than other stations. But the differences in coverage were so small they fell short of statistical significance. In contrast, coverage in newspapers Committed to public journalism was substantively different from other papers.     

Parental Monitoring of Children’s Television Viewing in a Sample of Peruvian Caregivers

Parental monitoring of children’s television viewing is an important family practice that helps children understand the messages they find on advertisements and program content. Research points at different dimensions of monitoring, including parental co-viewing, rules about when and how much time children can watch television, and active parental mediation. The study describes different dimensions of parental monitoring in a sample of 303 caregivers of primary school children living in Lima. Main findings reveal that about a third of the sample engaged in parental monitoring never, rarely or sometimes, the education level of the caregiver was positively associated with limiting the time children can watch television, and that child’s age was negatively associated with the frequency of active mediation and limits on the content children may watch on TV. Further research is needed in order to understand the practice of parental monitoring across children’s age groups in the context of Peru.     

Quality Assessment of Television Programs in Israel: Can Viewers Recognize Production Value?

Television programs' production value is highly regarded by professionals as a crucial dimension of program quality. This study examines the degree to which lay viewers, rather than professionals, are sensitive to television programs' production value as a distinct evaluative dimension, their ability to pass educated judgments on production value, and the impact of these judgments on their overall program appreciation and quality assessment. Based on a large-scale survey of television viewers in Israel, we find that production value makes up a distinct evaluative dimension, indicating that viewers are sensitive to production considerations. Production value assessments also explain television program appreciation and quality evaluations. On the other hand, there are indications that lay viewers are not very good at discerning gradations of production value among different programs and genres. These findings are discussed in the context of the conflicting interests among Israeli program makers and television channel franchisers to cut costs or to invest in the quality and production value of domestically produced programs. Based on the findings, a deliberative procedure is suggested which can accommodate these conflicting interests by combining lay viewers’ quality assessments with professionals’ more considered and informed judgments.     

Duopoly Ownership and Local Informational Programming on Broadcast Television: Before–After Comparisons

This study examines the relationship between duopoly ownership structure and the supply of local news and public affairs programming in the local television market. The results show that both duopoly stations and non-duopoly stations significantly increased their local news programming from 1997 to 2003. The increases were attributable to the top four stations in each market. In addition, stations did not increase their efforts in local public affairs programming after becoming duopolies. The study also found that there was no significant difference in the amount of local news or local public affairs programming aired by duopoly and non-duopoly stations.     

Which New Forms of Television Advertising Are Most Strongly Recalled? A Quantitative Analysis

In recent years the loss of effectiveness of television advertising based on traditional spots has led to the development and consolidation of new forms of advertising. In this article, the authors analyze the recall effectiveness of three new television advertising formats (television billboards, internal telepromotions, and external telepromotions). We use a representative sample of Spanish television audiences to compare the advertising recall generated by each new form of advertising. The empirical analysis, carried out by means of a probit model, shows that television billboards generate better recall than external or internal telepromotions.     

Shop 'til We Drop? Television,Materialism and Attitudes About the Natural Environment

Cultivation theory research exploring the links between television viewing and attitudes about the natural environment has found evidence that heavier viewers of television are more apathetic about environmental issues than their lighter viewing counterparts. Why this relationship occurs has not, however, been explored. The current research, based on a mail survey sent to a 1,000-person national random sample and a 1,000-person random sample of a national environmental organization, finds that the explanation for the relationship between television and a lack of concern for the natural environmental may be explained by materialism. Materialism is found to mediate the relationship between television viewing and attitudes about the natural environment. This finding offers important insights not only into our understanding of cultivation theory but also into our understanding of our relationship with the natural environment at a time when such information has perhaps never been more essential.     

On the Spot: A Functional Analysis of Congressional Television Spots, 1980–2004

Congressional elections are crucial to the American political system and candidates spend millions of dollars seeking votes with television spots. Unfortunately, the literature in this area is a hodgepodge of studies (with different methods and samples) rather than a comprehensive analysis of congressional television advertising. This study utilized the Functional Theory of Political Campaign Discourse to content analyze 744 television spots for House and Senate candidates from 1980–2004. Candidate discourse in these spots employed acclaiming (positive) strategies much more frequently than attacking (negative) or defending (refutational) strategies. Unlike discourse in presidential campaigns, congressional TV spots tend to place equal emphasis on policy and character (although since 1992 the emphasis has been on policy). Democrats tend to attack more and to discuss policy more than their counterparts. Incumbents acclaimed more and attacked less than challengers, whereas open-seat candidates have a style that lies between these two extremes. Open-seat candidates discuss past deeds less frequently than incumbents or challengers, both of whom tend to rely on the incumbent's record to attack (challengers) or to acclaim (incumbents).     

Constructing Television Communities: The FCC,Signals, and Cities, 1948–1957

This study analyzes the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) efforts to define the television “community” as it formulated a national television system. The first opportunity came with the Sixth Report and Order, when the FCC made no provision for tailoring signal contours to existing communities. The second came when the FCC established program guidelines for new TV licensees and mandated a broad, amorphous community to be served by local programming. Such communities often bore little relation to local political, cultural, or social units. These spatial dimensions, which efficiently served network advertisers, still exist in many U.S. television communities.     

Age-Based Ratings,Content Designations,and Television Content: Is There a Problem?

An analysis of 9 week-long samples of prime-time network programming broadcast between the fall of 1997 and the fall of 2003 found that more than 8 out of 10 programs were labeled with an age-based rating (TV-G, TV-PG, TV-14, or TV-MA), whereas fewer than 4 in 10 programs were also labeled with content-based ratings (V, S, L, or D). Although programs with age- and content-based ratings accurately reflected sexual and violent content, a sizable number of programs without content-based ratings also had sexual and violent content. Ratings provide parents with incomplete information on which to base viewing decisions.     

Does Watching Television Actually Make One Nicer? The Use of Conflict Management Message Styles

A telephone survey of 122 respondents was conducted to examine whether exposure to television predicted the use of certain conflict management message styles. Television exposure was not a significant predictor of using a “self-oriented” or “issue-oriented” approach. However, it was a significant predictor of using an “other-oriented” approach to conflict management. Viewers with greater exposure to television were more likely to report using positive message responses when dealing with conflict than their lighter-viewing counterparts.     

Television and foreign policy us response to the Beijing and Kwangju pro‐democracy movements

This study examines US network television coverage of the 1980 Kwangju and 1989 Beijing‐Tiananmen Square incidents in relation to American policy towards those East Asian nations and the increasingly global impact of television on foreign policy. Both episodes involved pro‐democracy movements, imposition of military force, violence, and implications for US policy. While both were covered by television, Beijing became a global media event while Kwangju was accorded more perfunctory coverage. The study documents heavy reliance on official sources in coverage of both events, but greater attention to pro‐democracy demonstrators in Beijing as more ‘worthy’ victims than those in Kwangju. It also points to the difficulty language poses for Western news organizations in East Asia, and the tendency of television to serve as a reference point for all reporting. The hypothesis that media index their coverage according to mainstream government debate must take into account such factors when being tested in an era of global television. When television is less actively engaged in covering an event, as in Kwangju, policymakers have greater power to shape the public dialogue. A broad question for the future regards the evolution of institutions to promote civil versus statist discourse.