Bundling, a practice which has increased dramatically in the television and cable industries in recent years, occurs when program distributors package groups of movies and episodes of series, and then sell licenses to use these packages to TV stations and cable channels. Typically, such bundled packages include both highly desirable and less…

Despite longstanding interest in cable television regulation, little has been investigated concerning crossownership of cable with other media properties. A study examined the issue from economic (antitrust) and First Amendment (diversity of sources) perspectives. Data on where the cable companies' franchises were located and in what other media…

A two-fold statistical analysis examined the creative development of the 15-second television commercial, providing a follow-up to a similar study conducted in 1986. Study 1 of the present analysis examined 335 actual 15-second spots extracted from 30 hours of network daytime and primetime programming in the fourth and first quarters of 1988-1989.…

A study focused on predictors of people's learning from public service announcements (PSAs) seen on television. Telephone interviews were conducted with 480 adults randomly selected from residents in Dane County, Wisconsin, in October 1987. Typical demographic information was obtained: sex, age, income, occupation and education. Commercial slogans…

A study examined whether "Sports Illustrated" offers a biased view of the sports world by focusing primarily on the eastern teams. The units of analysis were articles about Major League baseball appearing in the "Sports Illustrated" issues from late April to early October in the years 1975 to 1984. The teams were divided into…

To examine the role that items on the list of "What Literate Americans Know" (developed by E. D. Hirsch, Jr.) plays in the nation's literacy, a study conducted an electronic search of "The New York Times" to establish the frequency of occurrence for a sample from the list. A random sample of 424 terms (9% of the total list) was…

A study was conducted to compare the news reporting of religion specialists and nonspecialists at three major metropolitan newspapers. Representing different news policies and structural constraints, 1,164 religion news items from the "New York Times," Minneapolis "Star," and the Richmond (Virginia) "Times-Dispatch"…

The principles of synergy, particularly as described by Charles Hampden-Turner in "Maps of the Mind," can be applied to critical thinking in television broadcasting. Synergy is the process by which one need or person combines optimally with another. A metaphor for the idea of the concrete and the abstract working together while they are…

Although wide variations exist among service professions, several common attributes affect the role of advertising in the service industries. For example, because a service is intangible, it cannot be evaluated before purchased or consumed. Depending on the degree of intangibility, the consumer's assessment becomes that much more difficult, and…

Jacques Ellul defined "prepropaganda" as the subtle and sophisticated use of news services to improve an authoritarian government's public image. Because its value is directly related to its being used sparingly, he predicted that prepropaganda would increase when an authoritarian government felt threatened and decrease when it once more…

A study was conducted to determine attitudes of police toward components of the law enforcement process and whether differences in rank, level of police enforcement, years of service to a police force, or familiarity with reporters made a difference in police attitudes toward newspaper reporters. Thirty-one officers completed a two-part…

In order to investigate the relative effectiveness of specific media attributes on student performance on criterion tests, a comparison was made of the effectiveness of two levels of stimulus explicitness in visuals in facilitating student achievement on criterion tests of knowledge, comprehension, and total understanding. Subjects were 171…

This study investigated the cognitive processes involved in picture interpretation as pictorial realism (i.e., iconic stimulus complexity) increases. Variables influencing cognitive efficiency in picture interpretation were analyzed, particularly field independence and ideational fluency. Field independence is the extent to which a surrounding…

Since 1974, when the Supreme Court concluded in "Gertz v. Robert Welch, Inc." that public figures and private figures deserve different treatment under libel law (with private figures needing a lower standard of proof), most lower courts have had to sort out the two categories. From the results in "Gertz" and other cases, three…

Film historians have tended to overlook the industrial film even though it has been widely used as a sales tool since early in this century. The Caterpillar Tractor Company was one of the first to adopt this medium as a means of demonstrating what its machines could do in a variety of situations. While other types of films have been made by…