Analyzes the frequency of cliches used by television sports announcers in order to understand better how the mind processes information under stressful situations. Finds some support for capacity theory and asserts that, under pressure, sports announcers may divert some of their attention away from communication and toward processing information.…

Analyzes three primetime family sitcoms in order to describe the nature of sibling interaction in television families. Research on television families is examined, and questions are raised concerning the value of television sibling images as role models for real people, and the effects of these models on family and peer relationships. (27…

Measured the effects of risk taking portrayed in television programs on children's willingness to take risks. Children, ages six to nine, viewed programs featuring either infrequent or frequent risk taking; a control group viewed no television. Subjects' self-reports indicated that children who viewed programs with frequent risk taking increased…

Uses previous reviews on the literature on children and television advertising to trace the short history of research from a social science perspective on advertising directed at children. Examines the dimensions that have come to define the field. Argues that nothing in these studies indicates an increasingly sophisticated perspective of the…

Offers a brief overview of V. Turner's syntactic and semantic framework for analyzing pilgrimage social drama. Uses this framework to examine the structure of the JFK assassination anniversary news stories and specials, as well as the fixed symbols which mark the pilgrimage routes from beginning to end. Discusses the individual, societal, and…

Examines theoretical and methodological controversies identified with the cultivation explanation of the way television shapes perceptions of social reality. Finds that content-specific viewing is a more reliable predictor than total viewing or select viewer sociodemographic variables of the public's tendency to perceive attorneys in the same way…

Argues that media flow research needs to be reconceptualized differently from notions of one-way flows that serve coherent national interests, and whose asymmetries can be measured statistically and unambiguously. Argues that global circulation is now complex and contradictory, and that new culturally-based models and methods are needed for…

Compares a 1950s Ford television commercial with a 1990s Volvo commercial. Discusses three major aspects of cubist television exemplified in the Volvo commercial: the destruction of Aristotelian viewer-to-stage distance using close-ups, the flattening of Renaissance deep-background perspective using telephoto zooms, and the implementation of an…

Discusses movie on demand (MOD) servers, which are computer systems that store movies in compressed digital form for broadcast cable television systems. Highlights include network bandwidths, a disk-based storage architecture for a MOD server, implementing VCR (video cassette recorder) functions to movie viewing, and buffers. (LRW)

Discusses the conceptualization of television viewing as a learned activity by highlighting the interrelatedness of children's linguistic, cognitive, and perceptual skills for accurate comprehension of temporal sequencing based on a study of five-year-old gifted, learning disabled (LD), and gifted/LD students. (references) (LRW)

Investigates similarities in how people respond to mediated presentations and nonmediated experience in the realm of social interaction. Finds that viewing distance manipulation failed to support predictions and watching larger television screens led to more positive emotional responses, in which subjects selected a viewing position that…

Explains how a teacher teaches to some of her students via television, how it has developed as a medium in a particular school, some of its distinct advantages, and some of the concerns with it. Gives a detailed picture of how the hardware affects the classroom situation. (TB)

Explores methods of promoting elementary school music programs. Suggests inviting visitors to the class as a means of increasing awareness of school music. Recommends sending press releases to school newsletters and local newspapers. Reminds teachers to make use of educational access channels on area cable television systems. (SG)

Describes an intermediate-level college course based on authentic, unedited, German television murder mysteries that lend themselves well to language instruction and maintain student motivation, improve listening comprehension, and, through accompanying exercises, support speaking, reading, and writing skills. (four references) (Author/CB)

Defends the importance for media study of a descriptive and evaluative scholarship grounded in old-humanist perspectives. Uses the television miniseries "Lonesome Dove" as a case study to argue that media texts, like literary works, can and should be evaluated according to the criteria of "formal mastery" and "intellectual coherence." (SR)