Cable Television Networks Research Articles

Impact of Social Media Marketing on Consumer Buying Behaviour (With Reference to Online Entertainment Platforms)

An alteration in the economy has occurred both at the micro and macro levels as a result of the coronavirus disease occurring at such an alarming pace and pushing the economy to a new normal. Since then, customers' buying behaviour, attitudes, tastes, and decision-making processes have altered. The devastating effects of the Corona Virus epidemic were also felt by online entertainment platforms. Social media marketing activities also influence the behaviour of consumers towards online entertainment platforms. As Traditional media channels have been challenged by the emergence of OTT platforms, which puts pressure on cable and satellite television networks' dominance. Consumers are cutting the cord and switching from traditional TV subscriptions to streaming services as a result of this transition. Traditional broadcasters and pay-tv providers have thus had to modify their methods in order to remain competitive, either by starting their own OTT platforms or collaborating with already-existing ones. By giving customers more convenience, choice, and control over their media consumption, OTT platforms have revolutionised the entertainment sector. Their disruptive impact on conventional media platforms is clear, changing consumer behaviour and forcing established firms to react. Further investigation is required as the OTT environment develops in order to examine new patterns, regulatory outcomes, monetization techniques, and the long-term effects on the entertainment industry. This research aims to analyse the impact of social media marketing on consumer preferences towards online entertainment platforms in India. It also seeks to identify the factors influencing customer behaviour towards these platforms and study the perception of Jaipur's consumers towards subscription-based services for entertainment. Additionally, the research investigates how social media affects consumer decision-making processes when selecting and engaging with online entertainment platforms. The research methodology for this study primarily focuses on data collection and analysis. A mixed-methods approach has been employed, collecting both quantitative and qualitative data to gain a thorough understanding of how social media influences consumer behaviour towards online entertainment platforms. With the aid of a self-structured questionnaire, primary data has been collected for the study. The survey has included Likert scale-based questions to assess respondents' opinions on social media, online entertainment platforms, and their content preferences. The questionnaire also inquires about the frequency and impact of social media usage on purchasing decisions. To ensure reliable and generalizable results, appropriate statistical methods have been employed to determine the sample size of Jaipur city. For qualitative sampling, random convenience sampling has been utilised. Qualitative data analysis involved content and frequency analysis techniques, along with graphical representations of the data. The study's findings have been drawn based on these analyses.

The U.S. cable televisions' framing of mass shooting: a grounded discovery of competing narratives

News frames play a vital role in shaping the audience's interpretation of the news, their participation in policy discussions, and their engagement in public discourse. This study uses the Analysis of Topic Model Networks (ANTMA) frame analysis grounded approach and examines the 2017 Sutherland Springs, Texas, mass shooting coverage in a house of worship by three U.S. cable television networks—CNN, Fox News, and MSNBC. News reports for the first seven days following the shooting were collected from the cable networks' Twitter, YouTube, and website accounts. A total of 290 news reports were analyzed and 760 aggregate units for frames were coded. The results demonstrate that ANTMA grounded approach is an effective method for frame analysis and support research about the news media's emphasis on victims, community, and individual frames in cases of mass shootings. They identify differences in the issue-based frame of gun vs. mental health debates. Additional new frames of empathy, interventions, reactions, and security were discovered. Results also show differences in frames used and their frequency between the digital platforms of Twitter, YouTube, and websites and cable organizations. These differences show each media network's ideological perspectives or competing news narratives. The findings raise relevant questions to news coverage, policy debates about mental health and gun violence, and cultural awareness of the problem of mass shootings and public safety as the world becomes more global.

Direct-to-Video (On Demand): New Industrial and Cultural Valuations of Nontheatrical Film Releases

Direct-to-Video (On Demand): New Industrial and Cultural Valuations of Nontheatrical Film Releases

LINGUISTIC PECULIARITIES OF HUMBLEBRAGGING AND OUTRIGHT BRAGGING IN PRE-ELECTION DEBATES

The article is devoted to the study of the phenomenon of bragging in general and its two main types: Humblebragging and Outright bragging in pre-election debates. Also, fundamental driver of the article is to reveal what linguistic “tricks” are employed by political actors when advertising themselves in order the audience to think highly of them.
 Theoretical material of the research is collected from the works of Peggy Klaus, Meredith Fineman, Ovul Sezer et la and Henry Alford. As for the practical material, it is mainly retrieved from American cable and satellite television network, C-Span.
 Based on above named sources, investigation revealed that various types of linguistic techniques such as: repetition, personal pronouns, idiomatic expressions, adjectives, intensifiers, comparative forms, superlative forms, rhetorical questions, rhetorical device such as enumeration etc, are used on frequent basis by politicians involved in political battle and bragging assuredly is very effective tool to knock your opponent down.

IMPACT OF CABLE TELEVISION NETWORK ON CHILDREN’S SOCIALIZATION

The study was about to find out the impact of cable television network on children’s socialization. The main objective of the study was to determine the relationship between violent programs and aggression among children as well as to find out the affects of cable television on children’s educational outcome. The population of the present study was parents from District Sargodha and multistage sampling technique was used for the selection of tehsil, union councils as well as respondents by adopting simple random sampling technique and convenient sampling technique at different stages. The data was collected by structured questionnaire and SPSS was used for data analysis. The data was analyzed by univariate analysis and bi-variate analysis i.e., chi-square test was applied for hypothesis testing. Results showed that cable television is highly influenced on the socialization of the children as violent behavior is caused due to greater exposure to violent programs. It is also found that it becomes the reason of reducing parent-children interaction pattern due to greater interest in spending time while watching television programs. It is also found that it is a cause of learning uncultured language/words from that programs and children could not pay proper attention on their educational performance as well.

Thermal management in high‐power Erbium Ytterbium doped fiber amplifiers for optimum efficiency

AbstractCladding pumping is considered to be one of the best amplification approaches in view of the capital and operational expenditure for the development of high‐power optical amplifiers. Such schemes use multimode high‐power pump lasers as the pumping sources and they give high power output in the range of 3–5 W to use in fiber‐to‐the‐home as well as optical cable television networks. With the requirement for high output power in multichannel cost‐efficient telecommunication systems, amplifier devices face some limitations during its operation at maximum operating power level. The major limitations are the thermal effects, damage thresholds, and available pump power. Effective thermal management is a better option to improve the pump power conversion efficiency and power scaling in high‐power fiber amplifiers. Analytical and experimental investigation of two approaches for the thermal management of a commercial 3 W amplifier is discussed. The first approach considers a regular Al 6063 heat sink‐heat spreader combination with forced air cooling. The structure of the heat sink is optimized and the performance is analyzed with Aluminum and copper material for the heat spreader. The second approach discusses a thermoelectric cooler‐heat sink combination and the analysis results showed better thermal management during the high‐temperature operation of the amplifier. Two heat sink materials are considered in the analysis and results are discussed in the paper. Considering the cost‐effectiveness of the proposed solution, the thermoelectric cooler and Aluminum heat sink assembly are validated.

Concerning the Humanitarian Crises in Ukraine

The humanitarian crises in Ukraine recall other armed conflicts that resulted in needless death, destruction and the flight of refugees in pursuit of safety. In some ways, the international cable television network coverage of the conflict in Ukraine may have brought a greater sense of immediacy to the devastation being experienced by the people there. Foreign press coverage in the early weeks of the conflict utilized “on the ground” correspondents reporting in real time on the atrocities they were witnessing. Eventually, the intensity of the armed conflict, coupled with the death and serious injury of journalists, caused some media outlets to withdraw some of their personnel to safer locations. The War in Ukraine might be further categorized as two humanitarian crises: the plight of citizens remaining in the country including the forces attempting to defend against the Russian invasion and more than 3.7 million so far who have become refugees. The displacement of civilians from Ukraine is nowthe largest such exodus in Europe since World War II (Economist, March 19-25, 2022). However, the refugee flight is smaller than from the recent civil war in Syria.

About One Approach to Using Dynamic Models to Build Digital Twins

The modern stage of technology development is characterized by the emergence of new paradigms for the construction of anthropogenic systems, such as cyber-physical systems, socio-cybernetic systems, etc. The task of data acquisition about the state of a multi-level system and managing the structure and behavior of a system consisting of many thousands of elements of different physical nature is a complex task. This article describes one of possible approaches to solving the problem of data acquisition and management of the structure of a large-scale heterogeneous system. The proposed approach is based on the idea of using dynamic digital twins, which are dynamic models of the observed system. This approach was used for the development of systems in various subject domains, in particular, in production management systems built on the Industry 4.0 principle, in the development of a technical support system for cable television networks and in the development of support systems for the construction of educational trajectories.

On the Challenges of Mutual Interference between Cable Television Networks and Mobile Fixed Communication Networks in the Digital Dividend Bands

Recently, the issue of monitoring and repairing leakage from cable television networks have re-emerged, particularly after the International Telecommunication Union released a part of the ultra-high frequency spectrum to mobile broadband services. The newly allocated spectrum, known as the digital dividend bands, was traditionally used throughout Europe for digital TV broadcasting. The emerging problem is the mutual interference between the new frequency spectrum utilized by the Mobile/Fixed Communication Networks and the band used by cable TV providers to offer their services. This article is a brief overview and a starting point for extensive research in this area. We started with a simple description of the cable television system and mobile/fixed communication networks focusing on the aspects associated with ingress and egress interference issues. We also discussed the approaches for detecting and measuring mutual interference and reviewed the relevant literature. This article is concluded with some proposed measures for reducing or mitigating mutual interference.

Telecast bans of television news in India: issues and reform

ABSTRACT The freedom of speech and the right to information are crucial fundamental rights guaranteed by the Constitution of India. Various governments have committed to protecting these rights. However, most governments have acted in breach of this commitment by using vague laws for political reasons. Through this article, we look at one such law often used for political reasons to enforce broadcasting bans, namely the Cable Television Network (Regulations) Act, 1995. We argue that the legislative framework for broadcasting under the said Act is constitutionally suspect. The problems that make this framework constitutionally suspect are: procedural and substantive unreasonableness, lack of uniform enforcement and absence of an effective statutory remedy. After identifying the defects in this law, we develop a normative constitutionally compliant framework for the regulation of broadcasters. Among other things, we recommend: clearly defining the contours of grounds for imposing broadcasting bans and separating the “investigating” and “adjudicatory” functions.

Audience Perception of Credibility of Indigenous Cable Television News Network in Nigeria

This study examines the perception of the audience on the credibility of Indigenous cable television news in Nigeria. Previous studies established that media audience in Nigeria has strong preference to international cable television news network. This preference stems from the perception that, these foreign outfits offer more truthful and objective reportage of events which the local media are deemed incapable of providing for the audience. With the emergence of Indigenous cable television network in Nigeria and rising criticism of news slanting leveled against international news outfit, this study investigated whether or not these Indigenous cable news network have gained the trust of Nigeria media audience. The study sought to establish the level of audience exposure and gratification sought from these outfit. The study utilized survey method to generate quantitative data. A sample of 360 respondents w ere drawn from civil servants in Anambra State. The findings revealed that Indigenous cable television network news in Nigeria, to a large extent have gained the trust of media audience since these audience perceived them to be credible sources of news.

What’s Whitney Got to Do with It: Black Female Triumph and Tragedy in the 2015 Lifetime Biopic Whitney

In 2015, the cable television network Lifetime broadcast the biopic Whitney, depicting the troubled life of the late superstar singer Whitney Houston. Whitney is the first film by director Angela Bassett, who, as actress, famously portraited Tina Turner in the biopic What’s Love Got to Do with It (Brian Gibson, 1993). In this article, I will first position Whitney within a larger tradition of the Hollywood biopic by making a comparison to earlier important biopics about black female entertainers, namely Lady Sings the Blues (Sidney J. Furie, 1972), starring Diana Ross as Billie Holiday, and What’s Love Got to Do with It. Second, I will discuss how the narratives of these three biopics tend to reduce their female subjects to victims, emphasizing the tragedy in their personal lives, while assigning much more agency to the male partners of these black female entertainers. Third and finally, I will analyze the final scenes of these three biopics in detail, as each presents a grand finale musical performance that seems to resolve the contradictions of the triumph and tragedy in their subject’s lives, yet in significantly different ways.

Voltage Estimation in Low-Voltage Distribution Grids With Distributed Energy Resources

The present distribution grids generally have limited sensing capabilities and are therefore characterized by low observability. Improved observability is a prerequisite for increasing the hosting capacity of distributed energy resources such as solar photovoltaics (PV) in distribution grids. In this context, this paper presents learning-aided low-voltage estimation using untapped but readily available and widely distributed sensors from cable television (CATV) networks. The CATV sensors offer timely local voltage magnitude sensing with 5-minute resolution and can provide an order of magnitude more data on the state of a distribution system than currently deployed utility sensors. The proposed solution incorporates voltage readings from neighboring CATV sensors, taking into account spatio-temporal aspects of the observations, and estimates single-phase voltage magnitudes at all non-monitored buses using random forest. The effectiveness of the proposed approach was demonstrated using a 1572-bus feeder from the SMART-DS data set for two case studies - passive distribution feeder (without PV) and active distribution feeder (with PV). The analysis was conducted on simulated data, and the results show voltage estimates with a high degree of accuracy, even at extremely low percentages of observable nodes.

Global Portals in National Markets: Branding Netflix in Israel

Global Portals in National Markets:Branding Netflix in Israel Michael L. Wayne (bio) Branding has been described as the defining industrial practice of television's recent past.1 As the frames that manage the interactions among viewers, content, and producers, television brands operate at multiple levels. For example, channels with well-defined brand identities are better able to establish strong relationships with loyal viewers; executives, industry observers, and academics see these relationships as central to commercial success in the increasingly competitive television market.2 Beginning in the mid-1980s, demographic network branding—reflected in Lifetime's slogan "Television for Women," for example—became a common industry response to increasingly fragmented audiences.3 In this context, heavily marketed flagship programming reflects the brand identity that network executives are attempting to cultivate. The best-known example of a signature series embodying a channel's brand identity is the case of HBO's The Sopranos (1999–2007) and the network's slogan "It's Not TV. It's HBO."4 Despite the television industry's conventional wisdom regarding the necessity for strong channel brand identities and flagship series, the most popular subscription video on-demand (SVOD) services have not used original content targeting specific audience demographics to construct distinctive brand identities. Instead, services like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu present themselves as "portals" that act as generalized viewing platforms for subscribers.5 Although the appeal of a given streaming service certainly depends on the quality and variety of available content, the brand identities of these services are [End Page 149] largely defined by the experiences that the portal offers viewers: a personalized television viewing experience made possible through internet distribution. Netflix, which competes directly with cable television networks and aggressively positions itself as a replacement for linear television, employs a "portal-as-brand" strategy in the US domestic market that seeks to make the service itself the audience's primary point of identification.6 The company frequently and strategically emphasizes streaming television's distance from and superiority to linear television. During his keynote address at the 2016 Consumer Electronic Show, for example, CEO Reed Hastings described ondemand video as "a revolutionary shift from corporate to consumer control."7 Netflix's marketing materials consistently present binge viewing as a mode of audience behavior that improves on traditional television's liveness and linear scheduling.8 Not surprisingly, executives at Netflix use the same strategic discourses to define the company's brand identity. When asked about the service's programming choices, chief content officer Ted Sarandos explains, "There's no such thing as a 'Netflix show.' That as a mind-set gets people narrowed. Our brand is personalization."9 Cindy Holland, vice president for original content, similarly asserts, "Our brand is as broad as the tastes of our members."10 By defining the brand in terms of personalization or the preferences of the service's 130 million subscribers, Netflix simultaneously separates its brand from those of the most successful cable networks and denigrates those same networks as "narrow" for providing loyal audiences with on-brand content. Yet the claim that there is a clear distinction between Netflix's portal brand structured around a particular television viewing experience and a linear channel's content-based brand becomes less tenable in transnational contexts.11 To illustrate some of the ways in which portal brands like Netflix can become content-based television brands in international markets, this article draws on examples from the pay-television industry in Israel. In contrast to its US strategy, Netflix has not marketed itself to Israeli consumers as a replacement for linear television. Instead, nearly all the company's advertising efforts result from partnerships with two local television providers: Partner TV, the country's second-largest "over-the-top" (OTT) television service, and Hot, the country's largest cable television provider. Given the symbiotic brand relationships between Netflix and Israeli multichannel providers, I argue that streaming television services in some national contexts appear as both personalized portal brands and traditional content-based brands. After describing these [End Page 150] relationships and Netflix's very limited local independent marketing efforts, this article concludes by suggesting a new term, "portal-as-content," that reflects how...

“Signals to Every Dip and Hollow”: The Rise and Fall of the Appalachian Education Satellite Program and the Appalachian Community Service Network

“Signals to Every Dip and Hollow”: The Rise and Fall of the Appalachian Education Satellite Program and the Appalachian Community Service Network Carson E. Benn (bio) In the era of Internet mass communication, the steady growth of distance education seems an inevitable consequence. Though the classic setting of physical classrooms, school buildings, and campuses cannot seriously be seen as threatened, distance courses are a permanent institution due to high-tech media. Reactions to distance education courses range from mild unease to more outright rejections. One study from a scholar in educational policy at the University of Wisconsin found that while the Internet has in some sense negated the issue of distance from students and campuses, the issue of “place” still has a significant bearing (for higher education at least) on where students apply and attend. The author dubs these areas “education deserts”—communities bereft of higher-education institutions or those that place a disproportionate burden on one or two community colleges. Roughly 10 percent of adults in America live in these areas, the study finds, and the availability of distance learning technology has not made any significant improvement in applications or enrollment among adults in these communities. A report on the article in The Atlantic observed that “the conversation about how to make college more accessible [End Page 109] is not new,” yet issues like education deserts “have been largely ignored.”1 An early forerunner to distance education in the Appalachian region was the cable television network, The Learning Channel (TLC). Now a largely irrelevant purveyor of reality TV shows, TLC in its earlier years produced educational programming as an alternative to its more entertainment-centric competitors. That TLC was once known in another life as the Appalachian Community Service Network (ACSN) is not a heretofore-unknown revelation—it’s circulated as merely an interesting bit of trivia about the present-day network, usually as an emblem of the irony in commercial networks purporting to present edifying and useful content to mass audiences. A closer look into the story of the ACSN and its predecessor, the Appalachian Educational Satellite Project (AESP), finds the nation was not always so cynical about television media. Indeed, contemporary conversations about educational television better resemble our present-day research into distance education technology and curricula than our complaints about TV shows. In the first few decades of the television era, the new medium carried a noteworthy and profound cultural optimism that has since waned, similar today to the way the Internet has been regarded in recent decades. A television set was regarded foremost as a means of entertainment, but was also genuinely considered a device with actual educational benefits, both for children and the general population. The years prior to the Appalachian experiments in satellite and cable telecommunications saw a fair share of cynicism about the public benefits of television, even in regard to the creation of the Public Broadcasting Service and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the late sixties. The goal of the men and women conducting the [End Page 110] later television experiments in Appalachia, as well as their primary benefactors, the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), was to explore new and advanced uses for the medium. To them, television could be used not only to connect a disadvantaged region to the rest of the world, but could also form a new, technologically-sophisticated institution in the region’s education system. Within the general scholarship in Appalachian studies, education garners a great deal of attention, distinguishing the topic as one of the most robust and refined areas of the discipline overall. Though all scholars of Appalachia owe a debt to Henry Shapiro and David Whisnant for Appalachia on Our Mind (1978) and All That is Native and Fine (1983) respectively, the intellectual challenges posed by those two works have been answered with distinction by a number of education historians.2 Thanks to the works of Deborah Blackwell, Jess Stoddart, Karen Tice, and Melanie Beals Goan (to name a few) we can examine with more magnanimity the characters and motives of a wide variety of educators working in the region and no longer feel compelled to look with a fine-tooth comb for traces...

US Presidential Elections 2016: A Comparative Study of Media Coverage of CNN and FOX News

The Presidential Elections in the United States have always remained the focus of attention for public and media. By playing the role of watchdog in the American society, mass media looks keenly and deeply on the policies, personal life, and character of Presidential Candidates during Presidential Elections of the country. The study examines and compares news coverage of the United States of America's (USA) Presidential Elections-2016 of two most Papular cable news television networks, i.e., FOX and CNN. This quantitative content analysis study purposively selected ninety news stories which were aired during the USA Presidential Elections-2016 from August 7, 2016, to November 7, 2016. The chosen news stories were analyzed according to the Framing theory's episodic and thematic frames. The findings reveal that the CNN, a leading supporter of Hillary Clinton, frames her more episodically and more thematically to Donald Trump in its stories. On the other hand, the FOX News stories presented Donald Trump more in the episodic frames and Hillary Clinton in more the thematic frames. The study concludes that both news channels, FOX and CNN have mostly framed both USA Presidential Elections’ candidates; Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton episodically by focusing more on their scandals and controversies related to their personal lives or character rather than on their policies and debates.

Design and implementation of a CATV network management system based on a general-purpose agent

Many cable television (CATV) devices, which cannot be feasibly monitored using a simple network management protocol, are used in CATV networks. It is difficult to remotely monitor these devices online because different protocols are used in different devices. In this paper, we design and implement a general-purpose network management agent that can communicate efficiently with different devices. Furthermore, data obtained from devices can be transmitted effectively to users. The simulation results show that this general-purpose agent can effectively respond to user requests, such as configuration requests and search requests. Moreover, the agent can maintain steady, stable device performance parameters while supporting concurrent multi-user operation.

An Updated Analysis of Direct-to-Consumer Television Advertisements for Prescription Drugs.

In 2015, the American Medical Association called for a ban of direct-to-consumer advertising (DTCA) for prescription drugs. Yet, the pharmaceutical industry spends more than ever on broadcast advertisements, with national health care costs largely driven by drug spending. An evaluation of these ads is critical, as these advertisements can impact the frequency which patients ask their doctors about medications. A content analysis of prime-time direct-to-consumer ads was conducted across 4 major cable television networks. The ad content (n = 61) was coded for factual claims made regarding target conditions, appeals used, portrayal of medications, and lifestyle characteristics shown. We found a substantial decrease in the percentage of ads that conveyed information about the conditions being targeted, such as risk factors (16%) and prevalence (16%). Positive emotional appeals (94%) continued to be emphasized; yet there was decreased use of negative emotional appeals (51%), pointing to an overall more positive portrayal of a patient's experience with a medication. The lifestyles portrayed in the sample largely featured how products can enable more recreational activities (69%) and fewer ads (7%) presented alternatives to product use. Direct-to-consumer advertising continued to promote prescription drugs above educating the population. Improvement in the educational value of DTCA is likely to require regulatory action rather than reliance on self-regulation by the pharmaceutical industry.

Equipping the Next Generations to Speak Their Faith Aloud

Mike is a thirty-one-year-old father of two, a priests son who grew up in the and a quiet but faithful Episcopalian who helps out each week in the toddler class in the Sunday school of his parish church. For several years, this was the limit of his engagement; after all, life in a growing family is demanding and time-consuming, and too often church can feel like one more burden in an overburdened life.But then Mike participated in a five-week series of sacred conversations with other members of his church who were under age forty, and he arrived at a growing awareness that his generation is responsible for the future of the church. We the people under forty gathered in that room, we are the next generation of leadership and evangelism and potential for the church, he said. church is constantly renewing itself with each generation, and we are either part of that renewal or part of standing back and letting it fall. So it almost feels like a trust fall exercise for the church. The church is constantly falling into the arms of the next generation of people who are catching it.The church is taking its trust fall into the arms of that next generation, and the numbers of arms extended to catch it are dwindling. The rapidly changing American religious landscape is one of increasing ignorance of and indifference to Christianity, and all the research points to post-Boomers1 as the primary contributors to the numbers of the ignorant and indifferent, the rising core in the so-called rise of the ?nones'.But there are Generation Xers and Millennial who are faithful church members, and it is to these generations we must turn to discover and equip evangelists who can speak about their faith to their peers. Post-Boomers-the majority of whom are not nones and do believe in God-might be the ideal evangelists to people in their own age group. However, neither the generational literature nor the evangelism literature speaks about specifically empowering and equipping members of this age cohort to evangelize their peers. Because these generations are tinkerers, as Robert Wuthnow observes, piecing together ideas about spirituality from many sources, especially through conversations with friends,2 I have been testing the power of guided conversations about faith as a means of helping small groups of post-Boomers to talk about what they do and do not believe, helping them to find words and language for their faith, and offering them the opportunity to practice these kinds of conversations in a safe space. What I have learned from these groups will not prove to be a magic bullet to solve all the evangelical problems of the twenty-firstcentury mainline churches; however, these guided conversations on faith with small groups of post-Boomers have helped to surface both challenges and opportunities for proclaiming faith into the future, as that future now falls into the arms of those Xers and Millennials who do believe.Challenges in Developing a Post-Boomer EvangelismChallenges that face the post-Boomers of faith (particularly in the more liberal, mainline denominations like the Episcopal Church) as they learn the spiritual practice of evangelism are both cultural and internal. The conversations I have had with these older Millennials and younger Gen Xers revealed that the taboos against publically speaking about faith are strong, emphasized by both the wider secular culture and also by denominations that have neglected to foster and teach evangelism. The growth of the Evangelical movement over the last thirty years-with its cable television networks, high-profile preachers, conservative political activism, and megachurches-only serves to crush any desire among mainline, liberal Protestants to evangelize, because they fear becoming identified with that aspect of Christianity. The influences of the secular, postmodern, multifaith culture also deter evangelistic speech in post-Boomers. The forces affecting post-Boomer faith that have been noted by Richard Flory and Donald Miller-including skepticism of institutions, tolerance of other faiths, rapid global access to a variety of ideas and truths, and a postmodern sense that all truth is relative3-all were actively in play in the group participants' faith lives, and the research on these generations indicates that they are typical among their peers. …

Association Between Media Dose, Ad Tagging, and Changes in Web Traffic for a National Tobacco Education Campaign: A Market-Level Longitudinal Study.

BackgroundIn 2012, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) launched Tips From Former Smokers (Tips), the first federally funded national tobacco education campaign. In 2013, a follow-up Tips campaign aired on national cable television networks, radio, and other channels, with supporting digital advertising to drive traffic to the Tips campaign website.ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to use geographic and temporal variability in 2013 Tips campaign television media doses and ad tagging to evaluate changes in traffic to the campaign website in response to specific doses of campaign media.MethodsLinear regression models were used to estimate the dose-response relationship between weekly market-level television gross rating points (GRPs) and weekly Web traffic to the Tips campaign website. This relationship was measured using unique visitors, total visits, and page views as outcomes. Ad GRP effects were estimated separately for ads tagged with the Tips campaign website URL and 1-800-QUIT-NOW.ResultsIn the average media market, an increase of 100 television GRPs per week for ads tagged with the Tips campaign website URL was associated with an increase of 650 unique visitors (P<.001), 769 total visits (P<.001), and 1255 total page views (P<.001) per week. The associations between GRPs for ads tagged with 1-800-QUIT-NOW and each Web traffic measure were also statistically significant (P<.001), but smaller in magnitude.ConclusionsBased on these findings, we estimate that the 16-week 2013 Tips television campaign generated approximately 660,000 unique visitors, 900,000 total visits, and 1,390,000 page views for the Tips campaign website. These findings can help campaign planners forecast the likely impact of targeted advertising efforts on consumers’ use of campaign-specific websites.