Cable Program Research Articles

Marketing mortality? Healthy vs. unhealthy food in television advertising

Abstract Background Cardiovascular disease has been the leading killer of Americans since the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918, despite recent COVID-19 mortality. During this global pandemic, the social distancing and stay-at-home requests, there was increased television (TV) engagement, and media marketing has become more impactful in modifying consumer behaviors. Purpose We evaluated the healthfulness of food marketing in the United States (US), based on TV commercials most frequently aired on American primetime networks during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods We reviewed a total of 104 TV commercials between 2020–2021 on network and cable programs dividing them into 4 categories: 1) fast-food chains, 2) brand-recognized individual items, 3) grocery chains, and 4) home-delivery meals. The food items displayed in each commercial were recorded and scored based on the previously validated healthful versus unhealthful nutrition scoring system (Sajita, et al., JACC 2017), assigning either positive or negative values for each food item in the commercial. Results We found that 58% of the commercials advertised food from fast-food chains (mean score = −2.82, indicating an average of nearly 3 more unhealthy items than healthy items per commercial), 27% were brand-recognized individual items (−0.86), 9% were grocery chains (−0.90), and 6% were for home-delivery meals (−0.33), with significant differences noted between fast-food and individual items, home deliveries and grocery chains (each p<0.0001). Conclusions This study demonstrated that commercial TV in the US routinely promotes the consumption of foods that are known in published medical literature to be unhealthy, particularly those underpinning cardiovascular disease and its risk factors. In order to prevent an increase in cardiovascular mortality during and after this global pandemic, we suggest regulation and or legislation to curtail the frequency and/or content of these commercials, and consider a ban on such advertising to children, similar to that previously employed in Canada and the European Union. Funding Acknowledgement Type of funding sources: None.

Not streaming near you: FilmStruck’s failure and the demise of the cinema-specific model

ABSTRACT This article charts the rise and fall of FilmStruck – Turner Classic Movies (TCM) and Criterion Collection’s cinema-specific streaming service. Despite its premier specialty film catalog (e.g., art-house, international, independent, and classic cinema) and loyal fans, WarnerMedia shuttered the service in 2018 – after two years in business. This article argues that FilmStruck’s demise revealed the limitations of cinema-specific models and the precarious status of specialty cinema in the streaming sector. Specifically, this article analyzes FilmStruck’s curation in relation to TCM and Criterion Collection’s respective cable programming and physical media practices. Doing so reveals that FilmStruck’s founders and professionals endeavored to reconfigure specialty cinema’s meanings and reaffirm the values of film-oriented practices in the streaming context. Ultimately, by historically situating FilmStruck’s trajectory and strategies within larger institutional contexts, this article illuminates modest, yet nonetheless important struggles over business models, cultural value, media specificity, and professional identities in the tumultuous 2010s-era streaming landscape.

Industrial Hip Hop against the Hip Hop Industry

Since its humble beginnings about three decades ago, South Korea’s national hip hop scene (gukhip) has grown to a formidable industry that runs the gamut from cutting-edge underground artists to mainstream K-pop idol rappers. In recent years, the cable TV audition programme Show Me the Money (SMTM) has become the gukhip industry’s ultimate gatekeeper as many aspiring hip hop artists increasingly depend on making it on the show to advance their careers. In this article, we focus on XXX, an underground hip hop duo who bucks this commercial trend of gukhip in both sound and message. Their noise-filled beats and shifting grooves echo the avant garde aesthetics and confrontational attitudes of industrial music, and their words are harshly critical of the money-driven gukhip culture as represented by SMTM. We provide a musicological analysis of XXX’s own version of industrial hip hop and examine what makes their “outsider” status sustainable vis-à-vis the gukhip industry.

Nuclear Power Plant Instrumentation and Control Cable Prognostics Using Indenter Modulus Measurements

As the fleet of nuclear power plants (NPPs) approach their1 original qualified life (typically 40 years) and operators seek license extensions, regulators require assurance that they can continue to operate safely in the decades to come. Some of the most important, yet often overlooked components, are the cables that provide the signal paths for instrumentation and control (I&C) systems used to ensure safe and efficient operation of NPPs.In response to this, the authors explore the use of expanding indenter modulus (IM), an industry-accepted technique for cable condition monitoring, into a prognostic tool for predicting the remaining useful life (RUL) of I&C cables. Not only is this technique non-destructive, but it can be performed while NPP cables are in service, thus making it practical for adoption into existing cable condition monitoring programs. In this paper, the authors describe an accelerated aging cable test bed used to acquire several types of measurement parameters as cables age. Additionally, practical techniques are described in which simple IM measurements can be leveraged for condition monitoring and RUL estimation.Error analysis indicates the proposed method is superior to conventional RUL estimation techniques, such as simple trending and curve fitting. The authors demonstrate that using IM can potentially provide a non-destructive, in-situ estimation of RUL for I&C cables. As described in this paper, the IM data clearly shows trends as a function of cable age, and shows promising performance for RUL estimation especially compared with conventional techniques.

Development of submarine cable hydrodynamic loads calculation program using MATLAB

A MATLAB program was developed to estimate the hydrodynamic forces due to wave and current on an un-trenched submarine cable of diameter 9 in resting at the bottom of a 14-m depth sea, utilizing the Fourier decomposition method. The aim of this part of the research is to provide an accurate estimation of the hydrodynamic forces acting on the cable and to present a comparison between the Morison force model and Fourier decomposition force model. In addition, investigating the methods of fixation for submarine pipes and cables as the commonly used methods is of high cost for both manufacturing and installation and maintenance processes has many drawbacks. This research is concerned with the ability of the cable to be stable on the seabed using its own weight and, if required, estimating extra chain weight to be added helping stabilize the cable on the seabed. A validation of the developed program with UWAHYDRO program developed in the Western Australia University is introduced in this article.

Cable Tension Estimation for Suspen-Dome Structures Based on Numerical Method

Suspen-dome structures have been widely adopted due to their superiority over traditional structures. Cable condition is crucial to the safety of suspen-dome structures, especially the magnitude of cable force. However, thus far, investigations on estimating the tension in this type of structure remain lacking. In this study, double-element method was initially developed to simulate cables, and its accuracy was validated. Tension compensation method was adopted to ensure that the cable force is equal to the designed value. Then, transient analysis was conducted based on an actual suspen-dome structure. The dynamic responses derived based on the overall structures and the simplified models were compared, and the reliability of the simplified models was validated. Finally, parametrical analysis was conducted to investigate the influence of support stiffness and cable-bending stiffness on the fundamental frequency of cables. A cable tension estimation program, which was suitable for suspen-dome structures, was updated. Results indicate that vibration method can maintain good accuracy when used in suspen-dome structures.

"This Weird Cable Program": Queer Atlanta and the Archives of The American Music Show at Emory's Rose Library

"This Weird Cable Program": Queer Atlanta and the Archives of The American Music Show at Emory's Rose Library

White Men Holding on for Dear Life and Taking It: A Content Analysis of the Gender and Race of the Victims and Killers in The Walking Dead

The present content analysis of the first seven seasons of AMC’s hit zombie thriller, The Walking Dead, revealed that of the 122 characters who were killed, most were White (78.7%) and male (75.4%), and the 87 characters who did the killings were also mostly White (82.6%) and male (60.9%). The show’s creators, then, have envisioned a post-apocalyptic society that is (mostly) White men killing off (mostly) White men in a sort of White male survivalist fantasy. Current results also revealed that of the female characters who met their death, 33% were lead characters, whereas only 16% of the male character deaths were leads. So although women die at comparable rates to the men on the show generally and are granted some agency by carrying out many of the killings, the show’s propensity to kill off major female characters with more dispatch than lead men ultimately reveals the women’s vulnerability when compared to the patriarchal survivors and leaders on the show. Social cognitive theory is used to speculate about the possible effects the popular cable TV program might have on audience members in the United States and worldwide.

Implementation of a historical materials’ presentation AR system in cooperation with a cable television program

In cooperation with a cable television program, we constructed an augmented reality (AR) system for the presentation of historical materials. We proposed a new media-fusion system called the historical materials’ presentation AR system, which integrates digital archives, AR technologies, and television programs. The proposed system consists of a mobile application and an AR-contents’ management system. The mobile application provides the user with historical museum materials in the form of AR contents and voice guidance. This application consists of the top screen, the AR-content acquisition screen, and the map screen. Meanwhile, the AR-content management system manages the AR contents and voice guidance provided to the user. This management system is a data management Web application for registering, editing, and deleting AR contents and the voice guidance used in the mobile application. The operability, necessity, and functionality of the historical materials’ presentation AR system were evaluated in a questionnaire survey of 45 subjects. All items were highly rated by the respondents.

Socialization through Leisure: a Case Study of Nickelodeon Cable Television

This paper considers the leisure activity of viewing the Nickelodeon cable television programs by adolescents between the ages of eight and 14 years as a possible socialization indicator inspired through leisure. Within this context, socialization is considered based on behaviour and attitude. The paper thus considers variables such as the quality and quantity of exposure to the station and its program and the level of perceived imitation and modelling by the respondents of their favourite Nickelodeon characters. This is in relation to Bandura’s Social Learning Theory. The paper also considers the respondents’ concept of reality as it relates to the cable station’s programs and the respondent’s decision of what they believe is acceptable public behaviour. The result showed that the respondents perceived that watching their favourite Nickelodeon program series is a form of leisure from which they deliberately expose themselves to mainly because they personally enjoy watching these programs. A number of the respondents also indicated that they tend to imitate their favourite Nickelodeon characters but most limit this imitation to when they are with friends or when alone. The major aspects imitated are the way their favourite Nickelodeon characters speak, dress and act. This suggests that television viewing has a long term effect on the selected respondents even though they are not heavy viewers, spending approximately 1–5 h a day on this leisure activity. A large percentage of the respondents also indicated that they did not believe that the world their favourite characters presented was real neither were they convinced that these characters could teach them more than their parents and teachers. This suggests that socialization institutions such as schools and parents still have a strong effect on other aspects of the respondent’s lives such as academics, discipline and respect. This limited effect of television viewing on the respondent’s concept of reality and worldview may be based on the limited time majority indicated they spend watching the station’s programs. The selected respondents for this study are students of the junior secondary classes of the International School of Ibadan, the secondary school attached to the University of Ibadan.

The Foundations of U.S. Public Opinion About Campaign Finance in the Post-Citizens UnitedEra

Abstract Those seeking to influence campaign finance policy often invoke public opinion to support their legal and policy arguments. Thus, an understanding of the factors that explain citizens' views about the topic can help illuminate the political landscape surrounding it. This study examines the foundations of public opinion about campaign finance issues that emerged in the wake of the 2010 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Citizens United. An analysis of original data from a national survey found that political predispositions—including party identification, political ideology, external political efficacy, trust in corporations, and political interest/attention—predicted individuals' opinions, as did use of the Fox News cable channel and satirical television news programs. The results speak to how a range of actors may shape and capitalize on the nature of public opinion here.

Punk Subculture and the Queer Critique of Community on 1980s Cable TV: The Case of New Wave Theatre

If histories of television recognize it all, the relationship between punk subculture and the mass cultural medium of television is often rendered as a story of misreprentation, conflict, or mutual avoidance. Such studies overlook a rich history of punks throughout North America who produced numerous programs for cable television, especially the non-commercial forum of public access, in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Conceiving of TV as a kind of social technology, some punks actively and critically engaged in producing subculture both on and through the medium. This article looks at the case of New Wave Theatre (Theta/KSCI 1979–1983), a Los Angeles–based cable program that featured punk and new-wave bands, performance art, and interviews. It argues that through distinctive performance tactics and production practices, New Wave Theatre developed a form of “subcultural television” rooted in queer “antisociality.”

Touchy Subjects: Sex in the Workplace on Broadcast, Cable, and Internet Television

A content analysis of workplace sexual interactions, informed by past research on sexual harassment in televised workplaces, was conducted of 100 U.S. broadcast, cable, and Internet television programs that featured work or a workplace as a prominent setting. Although sexual interactions were relatively common, they were generally depicted in ways that did not clearly communicate harassment. Sexual talk and behavior in the workplace were generally met with either reciprocation or no response. Workplace sexual behavior was more frequent in situation comedies than in other genres of entertainment television content and more common in programs produced for distribution over the Internet than in programs produced for distribution through cable channels or broadcast networks. Results are discussed in terms of likely consequences of viewing, particularly noting that theories of media influence suggest that viewing such programming is likely to contribute to greater tolerance of sexual talk and behavior in the actual workplace.

Vertical Integration, Regional Concentration, and Availability in Cable Programming Networks

Using a 2009 cross-sectional database of digital cable systems in the United States, this study examines the combined effects of vertical integration and regional concentration (cable TV clusters) on the carriage and tier positioning of cable networks. Focusing on four basic cable network segments—the outdoor, cartoon, movie, and Comcast affiliated networks—this study finds that vertical integration has reduced program availability for cable subscribers by increasing their access to integrated networks and by limiting their access to unaffiliated networks. It also finds that an increase in the regional concentration of cable systems positively affects the availability of overall basic cable networks, regardless of vertical ownership. An increase in regional concentration is also associated with a decrease in the effects of vertical integration, suggesting that system efficiency through regional concentration may mitigate the vertical integration effect.

How Partisan Media Polarize America MatthewLevendusky. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2013.

How Partisan Media Polarize America Matthew Levendusky. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press, 2013.Partisan news media are not new in the United States. For much of this nation's history, all news reporting was partisan. Early newspapers took a clear position on issues, siding with Federalists or Anti-Federalists, Whigs or Democrats, and eventually Republicans or Democrats. While the twentieth century saw a shift to objective journalism, partisan media have reemerged in recent years. In How Partisan Media Polarize America, Matthew Levendusky argues that the combination of partisan political news and the modern twenty-four hour news cycle has fundamentally changed the relationship between media, governance, and society.This central thesis leads to several questions. Do partisan media make individuals more polarized? Do partisan media make citizens less likely to trust or cooperate with the other political party? Do partisan media affect voting choices and the way people interpret elections? How do partisan media affect American politics in general? These questions frame Levendusky's research and provide the organizational structure for this book.Levendusky begins by demonstrating the relevance of partisan news media in contemporary society. While the audience of individual cable television programs still remains limited-and leading partisan cable news programs still attract less than half the viewership of the nightly network news broadcasts- ratings trends show that preferences are changing. News consumers are shifting away from traditional news and toward partisan cable news programs that offer heavy doses of analysis and perspective. Such changing preferences, combined with new economic, technological, and regulatory environments, have led to the rise of partisan cable news personalities, like Bill O'Reilly and Rachel Maddow, radio talk show hosts, like Rush Limbaugh and Randi Rhodes, and websites like Town Hall and Daily Kos. While polarized news programs exist across many media today, Levendusky places a special emphasis on cable news networks, and focuses on Fox News, which caters to a Republican and conservative audience, and MSNBC, which caters to a Democratic and liberal audience.After establishing the premise for this research in the first chapter, the book goes on to present data gathered in response to the four research questions. Chapter 2 presents the results of a series of case studies and a comparative analysis of news content during the 2008 presidential election and during the first year of the Obama administration. Chapter 3 explains the implications of partisan news coverage; Chapter 4 presents results from a series of five original experiments; Chapter 5 presents results from an additional three original experiments; Chapter 6 presents results from a new analysis of data from the 2008 National Annenberg Election Study; and Chapter 7 synthesizes and discusses the findings. …

Watch Your Step: The New York Times, Breaching Confidentiality, and 12-Step Programs

Twelve-step programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous and Narcotics Anonymous invite members to trust that what is said in meetings remains confidential. However, the New York Times, a prominent and influential newspaper, has breached that confidentiality, offering both a precedent and a rationale to other media including newspapers, cable news programs, internet news blogs, and so on. This prominent breach may influence not only other news media but also the trust that 12-step members have in their programs.

The Future of Online Video: An Economic and Policy Perspective

We explore the economics of the online video entertainment industry to provide a foundation for understanding its economic future and how regulation may affect it. We first document recent development of online video, including market structure, prevailing programming windows, and content aggregation patterns. In spite of its remarkable efficiencies, we identify four potential obstacles to online video’s future growth: competition from increasingly efficient MVPDs, including advantages they have in large scale aggregation of online content via “TV Everywhere” (TVE) services; limited availability of high quality content, especially windowed programming; limited development of successful online business models, especially advertising; and ISP pricing strategies that may raise effective consumer prices of video consumption. In support of our analysis of TVE, we report original research on the “authentication” (of an MVPD subscription) policies of major cable and broadcast programming networks. In conclusion, we discuss the role that FCC regulation or other government policies can play to ensure future competition and open entry in the online video industry.

The Cross-Pressured Citizen in the 2012 Presidential Campaign

The cross-pressured citizen—a person who affiliates with one political party but plans to vote for the nominee of another—embodies the complicated nature of political decision making. Enduring considerable scrutiny since the pioneering campaign studies of the 1940s and 1950s, the role of the cross-pressured partisan in a presidential election campaign is still not fully understood by scholars. First, this study explores who the cross-pressured partisan was in the 2012 presidential campaign by examining the formative factors that influenced the likelihood of prospective defection from one’s “home” party. Second, we explain how cross-pressured citizens behaved when seeking out news media compared to their consistent counterparts. Using national survey data collected at the midpoint of the 2012 campaign, we find that approval of President Barack Obama was a critical factor in understanding cross-pressured partisanship. Furthermore, cross-pressured Republicans were significantly less likely to attend to conservative cable programming compared to consistent Republicans. The results present a compelling extension of over seven decades of work examining the cross-pressured citizen.

Protective Eyewear Use as Depicted in Children’s Television Programs

To characterize the depiction of protective eyewear use in scripted children's television programs. Viewership ratings data were acquired to generate a list of the most-watched scripted broadcast and cable programs for the 2- to 12-year-old age group. The three highest average viewership programs from broadcast and cable programming that met the inclusion criteria were analyzed by two independent reviewers. Review of 30 episodes revealed a total of 244 exposure-scenes in which an individual was engaged in an activity requiring eye protection. There were 5.5 (mean = 8.1) exposure-scenes per episode, with 26 of 30 (87%) episodes containing at least one exposure-scene. There were 19 depictions of protective eyewear use (8% of total exposure-scenes). Fifteen of the 19 cases of protective eyewear use occurred on broadcast programming. Six eye injuries were depicted in the media content. The depiction of protective eyewear use during eye-risk activities is rare in scripted children's television programs and eye injuries are rarely depicted.

Basic Cable Network Segmentation Toward Minorities and Other Niche Audiences in a Digital World: An Empirical Study of Cable Advertising

Digitization of cable TV systems has permitted not only higher quality (HD) programming, but a proliferation of channel space, sparking a second wave of cable programming network entry since the late 1990s. Finer and finer segmentation of cable networks toward niche audiences, including racial and ethnic minorities, has thus been permitted. Yet, descriptive data indicate that average cost per thousand CPM advertising rates of basic cable networks remain far below those of the “broad appeal” programming on the major broadcast networks and the supply of programming orient toward racial and ethnic audiences (eg, BET), appears to be low. In this paper, we attempt to understand the limitations of cable television networks in more finely segmenting toward niche audiences, especially toward racial and ethnic audience groups. Our primary approach is by means of an empirical study of the determinants of cable TV network advertising rates, the source of about 2/3 of total revenues of basic cable networks on average. Using a database of 78 basic cable TV networks operating in 2010, primarily supplied by A C. Nielsen, preliminary results indicate that cost per thousand (CPM) advertising rates increase, at a decreasing rate, as the network’s household reach increases, but that the size of network ratings have no significant effect. The cable “reach handicap” is thus a significant damper on advertising revenues of basic cable networks, but there is no evidence that the small size of audiences, per se, reduces CPM rates. Viewer age has a significant effect in most models, but other demographic factors, including % black and % Hispanic, and audience homogeneity, have no measurable effect on ad rates (contrary to previous research in radio and TV which find lower ad rates for blacks and Hispanics). Finally, we investigate determinants of the distribution of blacks and Hispanics among 84 basic cable networks, and find that while content elements are an important factor, much of the variation can be explained by production values, as indicated by network production costs, a factor that attracts audiences without any regard to racial or ethnic origin.