Basic Research-Reference Material

Audiovisual Market Place 1978: A Multimedia Guide (431 pp.—$21.50, paper)

Fine Arts Market Place edited by Paul Cumnings (403 pp.—$19.95, paper)

Photography Market Place edited by Fred W. McDarrah (502 pp.—$15.50, paper)

Keith A. Larson's Public Relations, the Edward L. Bernaypes and the American Scene: A Bibliography (Westwood, Mass.: F.W. Faxon Co. "Useful Reference Series No. 114"—$25.00)

Ching-Chih Chen's Scientific and Technical Information Sources, (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1977—$24.95)

Book Dealers in North America: A Directory of Dealers in Secondhand and Antiquarian Books in Canada and the United States of America (London: Sheppard Press, updated every four-five years—inquire on price)     

Commonwealth Media

Television, Censorship and the Law, by Colin R. Munro (208 pp.---$22.00)

Characteristics of Local Media Audiences, by Ray Brown (130 pp.---$23.00)

Newspapers as Organizations, by Lars Engwall (288 pp.---$29.0O)

Broadcasting and Youth (London: Calouste Gulbenian Foundation, 98 Portland Place, London W1N 4ET, 1979---£1.70 or about $4.00, paper)

Carl Gardner, ed. Media, Politics & Culture: A Socialist View (London: Macmillan/Atlantic Highlands, N.J.: Humanties Press, 1979---$21.50/9.75)

Asa Briggs, Governing the BBC (London: British Broadcasting Corporation, 1979---£10.00 or about $22.00)

Graham Cleverley's The Kettering Standoff: A Study of a Strike (Southhamption: Aeropagus, 1978---price not given, but available in hardback and paper)

Paul Hoch's The Newspaper Game: The Political Sociology of the Press (London and New York: Marian Boyars Ltd., 1974, released US in 1979---$10.00)

Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC Information Services, Ottawa, Ontario K1A ON2, Canada---available free on request, paper)

Australia: Henry Mayer tells us of nine recent publications on page     

Regulation

Bill F. Chamberlin and Charlene J. Brown, eds., THE FIRST AMENDMENT RECONSIDERED: NEW PERSPECTIVES ON THE MEANING OF FREEDOM OF SPEECH. AND PRESS (New York: Longman, 1982---$27.95)

Marc A. Franklin, CASES AND MATERIALS ON MASS MEDIA LAW (Mineola, N.Y.: The Foundation Press, 1982---$26.00)

LEGAL AND BUSINESS ASPECTS OF THE ADVERTISING INDUSTRY 1982 (Practicing Law Institute, 810 7th Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10019---$30.00, paper)

PRIVACY (Social Issues Resources Inc., P.O. Box 2507, Boca Raton, Fla. 33432---two loose-leaf volumes containing a total of 180 articles, $117.00, also available separtately at $65.00 and $52.00 respectively)     

Cable Television

CABLE PROGRAMMING RESOURCE DIRECTORY 1987 edited by Gregory Epler-Wood and Paul D'ari (Washington, DC: Broadcasting Publications, 1987—$34.95, paper)

SYMPOSIUM: CABLE TELEVISION by the editors of the Federal Communications Law Journal (UCLA School of Law, University of California, Los Angeles, 90024—price not given, paper)     

Practical Guides

THE DESIGN OF ADVERTISING by Roy Paul Nelson (Dubuque, IA: Wm C. Brown, 1989—price not given, ISBN 0-697-04374-6)

EXPLORING COLOR PHOTOGRAPHY by Robert Hirsch (Dubuque, IA: Wm. C. Brown, 1989—$30.00, paper, ISBN 0-697-06132-9)

VIDEO HELD PRODUCTION by Ron Whittaker (Mayfield Publishing Co., 1240 Villa St., Mountain View, CA 94041—$34.95, ISBN 0-87484-836- 9)     

Public service television at the digital crossroads ‐the case of Austria

Abstract

The present article examines the impact of new digital technologies, services and markets on changes to television in Austria from a media‐economics perspective. This article started form the assumption that the process of transformation towards digital distribution modes would make questions about the role and legitimacy of public service television in Austria more prominent than ever before. Since the technical development of digitisation steps up competition in the programming, advertising and viewer markets, the continued existence of public service broadcasting in Austria is at risk. Already facing strong competition from private cross‐border analogue television, private digital services promise increased competition for the ORF, will take away advertising volume and accelerate the cost spiral for rights. The ORF will have to face these challenges as the regulator has assigned it the role of a chief enabler of digital television in the market segments for satellite and terrestrial transmission. This article argues that programme universality as leading principle for public service broadcasting faces a legitimacy crisis as digital competitors may better target minority demands in fragmented audience environments. It remains to be seen how far the ORF is able to being both distinctive and attractive to its target audiences, so to ensure its position into the next millennium. Affordability and reliability of technology comes as another critical success factor. For the time being, the continuous confusion about lasting, stable and interoperable receivers in viewer homes is the main cause for the poor development of digital TV in Austria. This is aggravated by excessive prices and the current difficulty in seeing any added value in new digital content. To conclude, much hope is put into the Digitale Plattform Austria, a working group of experts to produce a coherent and evaluable digitisation concept, that will take up these challenges in a competent way.     

Bundling in Cable Television: A Pedagogical Note With a Policy Option

Bundling can be a pricing mechanism by which monopolists capture economic surplus from consumers.We suggest that given the cost structure of media markets, channel bundling in the cable and satellite market could also emerge in a competitive environment. A la carte channel pricing on cable television may or may not increase consumer welfare and could decrease total welfare. Because bundling may create other problems, policymakers may consider allowing cable and satellite networks to sell packages of channel space to viewers at a given price, allowing viewers to choose which channels they want in their packages. We term this option quasi-bundling.     

The NHS Lanarkshire Intranet site (FirstPort) and its effectiveness as a knowledge management tool

The use of intranets as knowledge management tools in the NHS has been applied with varying success. This study set out to evaluate the effectiveness of the NHS Lanarkshire intranet site FirstPort as a knowledge management tool and to capture opinions on what would be required of a new FirstPort 2 site to be launched in the summer of 2012. The research was conducted in June 2011 by Paul Herbert as part of MSc in Health Informatics at the University of Sheffield, supervised by Nigel Ford. At the time of the study, Paul was working at NHS Lanarkshire and he was able to give his employers a useful set of recommendations. He moved to his present post with Healthcare Improvement Scotland in June 2012. This article is the first in the Dissertations into Practice series to investigate web‐based tools for information and communication inside the NHS, but there are more in the pipeline. AM     

Arousing News Characteristics in Dutch Television News 1990–2004: An Exploration of Competitive Strategies

This study investigates the processes by which competition in the television news market might promote the presence of arousing characteristics in television news. A total of 3,024 news stories from six Dutch television news programs over the period 1990 to 2004 were investigated through content analysis. The findings of the study show overall increases in all 6 arousing characteristics. The findings also show that commercial newcomers included more arousing characteristics in their news stories than the public service broadcasters, that commercial newcomers developed a news format that featured more arousing characteristics, and that existing programs reacted to newcomers by increasing the amount of arousing characteristics in their news stories.