TV Networks Research Articles

What the Academy Can Learn from TV

Since the early 1970s, academia and popular culture have both been notorious for advancing so-called progressive political agendas. But whereas the university has continued and even accelerated its implementation of left-wing ideology, popular culture has gone in the opposite direction in the past decade, casting off the confining political straitjacket of earlier years and becoming more diverse in the ideas and values it presents. In fact, it's not at all too much to say that today's broadcast network and non-premium cable TV dramas and comedies are a good deal more hospitable to the values traditionally considered conducive to personal success and happiness than those conveyed by the nation's institutions of higher education.Although the subject matter of today's shows is even more provocative than in previous years, these elements are typically used in ways that either convey traditional values and ideas or are at least compatible with them. And although there still are shows and th... Language: en

Kingmakers, Executioners or Lost Voices from the Ivory Tower: When Do Critics Matter for the Performance of Creative Products?

When do taste conflicts between critics and mass audiences occur? When does critical opinion matter for the success of a new creative product? I address these questions by exploring the contextual forces that are likely to impinge upon critics’ persuasion power. A study of the population of sitcoms on U.S. TV networks (1949–2008) shows that after controlling for coverage selection, critical endorsements enhance the longevity of sitcoms. However, the life-enhancing effect decreases as the contrast of the form increases, and its appeal relative to other TV genres improves, or variation in audience taste grows. Greater exposure of the sitcom form to mass audiences does not mediate the influence of critical endorsements or devaluations. These findings contribute to the emergent theory of social categorization in organizational fields by offering a framework that captures the continuous enactment of valuation systems, valuation orders and role structures, as well as the interactions among them. They also enhance our understanding of the conditions under which creative innovations survive longer in the market.

Book Review Policy

* 'Sky ful of Lies' and Swans: New Tyranny of Shifting Information Power in Crises. Nik Gowing. Oxford, UK: Reuters Institute for Study of Journalism, 2009. 84 pp. £13 pbk. Free download from http: / / reutersinstitute.politics.ox.ac.uk/ publications /risj.html. Nik Gowing's career as a media professional, pundit, and scholar gives his insights into how news works considerable credibility. In this 2009 paper for Reuters Institute for Study of Journalism, longtime BBC commentator wonders and wanders through new media's impact on public policy, and ponders the new fragility and brittleness of social institutions. Are government, military, and corporate bosses powerless or ineffectual when what Gowing calls fast proliferating and almost ubiquitous breed of 'information doers' can set and frame debate before institutions of can in gear? Perhaps, but Gowing himself falls victim to this phenomenon. veteran newsman's insights suffer in this case from inabuity of traditional publishing to get him into print before urn, duh response to his analysis kicks in. As he worries about impact of new technologies and real-time commentary, doers have already, well, done it. value of Gowing's thoughts developed over his impressive news career resides not in his perspectives, but in noting how the new tyranny of shifting information power got there before him. Black Swan Theory refers to unexpected events that change world before powers that be can react to head off media reports that may be skyfuls of Ues. Gowing worries that such events and, perhaps more important, new realities of instant communication, make message management by governments, social and corporate leaders - and traditional media - impotent. Empowered by current, cheap, lightweight, 'go anywhere' technologies, ['information doers'] have an unprecedented mass ability to bear witness, Gowing writes. The result is a matrix of real-time information flows that challenges inadequacy oi structures oi to respond with effective impact and in a timely way. As any old-time journalist knows, being first and being right are crucial to social role of press as an influential thought-leader and player in larger society. In this case, Gowing is right, but not first. In this essay, Gowing concludes that news can turn our lives upside-down, and that traditional institutions - governmental, political, corporate, educational - are too far behind gentle curving flight of swans, black or otherwise. [T]he new real-time media realities are harsh, Gowing observes. But once understood nature of solutions is a 'no-brainer.' Given that this is such a no-brainer, it is a wonder that so much effort was required to outline nature of proposed solutions. As a major U.S. TV network once proposed in an advertising campaign for summer reruns, if you haven't seen it (or thought about it), it's new to you. …

A Longitudinal Study of U.S. Network TV Newscasts and Strikes: Political Economy on the Picket Line

This research examined whether U.S. network TV newscasts over time have shown less strike coverage, even adjusting for lesser numbers of strikes. They did not, but fluctuated wildly based on when sports and other entertainment strikes occurred. The project indicated a strike-impact-on-consumers focus with an element of social class that also may be at play. Network TV coverage opted for more time devoted to higher-class effects (airline strikes) as opposed to lower-class effects (intercity bus strikes). These results suggest a more nuanced understanding of strike news beyond points raised by political economy theory and declining resources for coverage.

Packet-loss error detection system for DTV and set-top box functional testing

Video communication in present multimedia networks is generally prone to transport stream packet-loss error that is manifested as annoying visual artifact in the decoded video signal. The packet-loss error is generally due to noise and attenuation in the transport medium, which introduces errors in the modulated digital packetized signal. A case of special interest related to this issue, at which this paper is targeting, is digital broadcasting network and Digital TV receiver as the end application. At the receiver side, the DTV set performs demodulation and evaluates the errors in the incoming transport stream by a parametric model, based on which it decides whether to display the damaged video or simply acknowledge signal state with black screen or frozen video. In order to test DTV set functionality in terms of detecting perceived packet-loss errors and switching between a correct mode (when no video degradation is present) to a signal mode (when video degradation is detected), we propose an embedded system and a novel method for packet-loss detection based on decoded image information. The proposed system is highly efficiently implemented on a INTEL Quad Core platform with a simple connection to the TV set (under investigation) via CVBS. This facilitates easy usage of the proposed test system on different geographical locations, within the broadcast network, with the same type of the DTV sets in order to reliably verify their functionality under different network conditions. The proposed system comprises of a novel algorithm module for packet-loss error measurement, based on which the DTV functionality is assessed. The results indicate high sensitivity of the algorithm to packet-loss error with satisfying robustness against various video sequences with different image content.

News Briefs

Topics include research into ways to provide security for RFID technology, plans to combine TV and social networking, lightweight batteries made of paper, and cybercrime flourishing despite the global economic downturn.

Poster Session II, July 14th 2010 — Abstracts: Mobile multimedia learning and basketball coaching

The purpose of the Poster is to present a summary of my thesis investigating the impact of Mobile Multimedia Learning, using Multimedia Content (Animation-Audio-Text) designed on the principles of Mayers Multimedia Learning Approach (1991), in a sports education domain. In particular for the learning of basketball plays, situational tactical tasks set by a coach, which in principle is a problem-based learning environment. The arrival of the twenty-first century has brought with it a new generation of young people who are no longer interested in being educated by traditional teaching methods. We live in an era where the net generation are searching to become part of the learning process by interactively getting involved with multimedia, simulation games, individual selfpaced learning modules, problem solving computer games, interactive TV, on-line library, bulletin boards, search engines and social networking. With this in mind the study aimed to provide selected basketball Coaches and Players with a number of multimedia animations to aid learning of team plays. The Plays were designed using Mayer’s (1991) Multimedia Learning Theory and were delivered using the Apple iPod media device The thesis also investigates other relevant learning theories, the development and design implications of the use of digital media in a contemporary classroom and the function of the tool in reality to facilitate learning in accordance with traditional domain oriented learning approaches. The Poster includes summarized data (with Headings) for the following areas:Introduction, Methods, Results/Conclusions, Acknowledgements, References, Contact

Imagined and performed locality

A busy industrial centre in a prosperous agricultural state, the town of Ludhiana in Punjab has been a porous site for both overseas migration and an influx of workers from other parts of the country. In the early 2000s, in the wake of economic reforms in India, the city was celebrating a new sense of cultural identity, not only at the regional (Punjabi) level, but also—unexpectedly—at the level of the city itself. How did this recent self-reflexive public culture link up with the simultaneous consolidation of cable TV networks in the city? This article examines the imagined communities and self-images that foster and are fostered by this form of globalised media capitalism, through the commodification of cultural identity. At the same time, however, it argues that the establishment of a televisual regime is also accompanied by performed communities, whose political valence has remained largely unarticulated and unacknowledged. The interactions between these virtual and performative communities have unfolded in different registers, thriving on the largely informal arrangements that corporate television networks and advertisers have had to rely on to operate at the local level. Attending to interactions such as these may be a useful supplement to the emphasis on semiotic practices of ‘reading’ and meaning-making in ethnographies of the media.

Broadcasting Video Streams Encoded With Arbitrary Bit Rates in Energy-Constrained Mobile TV Networks

Mobile TV broadcast networks have received significant attention from the industry and academia, as they have already been deployed in several countries around the world and their expected market potential is huge. In such networks, a base station broadcasts TV channels in bursts with bit rates much higher than the encoding bit rates of the videos. This enables mobile receivers to receive a burst of traffic and then turn off their receiving circuits till the next burst to conserve energy. The base station needs to construct a transmission schedule for all bursts of different TV channels. Constructing optimal (in terms of energy saving) transmission schedules has been shown to be an NP-complete problem when the TV channels carry video streams encoded at arbitrary and variable bit rates. In this paper, we propose a near-optimal approximation algorithm to solve this problem. We prove the correctness of the proposed algorithm and derive its approximation factor. We also conduct extensive evaluation of our algorithm using implementation in a real mobile TV testbed as well as simulations. Our experimental and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm: 1) is practical and produces correct burst schedules; 2) achieves near-optimal energy saving for mobile devices; and 3) runs efficiently in real time and scales to large scheduling problems.

The Impact of a Primetime Cancer Storyline: From Individual Knowledge and Behavioral Intentions to Policy-level Changes

We assessed the educational impact of a primetime network TV storyline that addressed cancer patient navigators. An online survey was administered after the episode aired. Exposed respondents saw the episode (n = 336); unexposed respondents did not (n = 211). Exposed respondents were more likely to report they would recommend a patient navigator (61% vs. 48%, p = 0.01). Clips of the episode were shown to raise awareness of patient navigators in a Congressional Committee meeting before the Patient Navigator Act was signed into law (2005). Entertainment education can have a positive impact on cancer knowledge and can contribute to policy-level decisions.

Informing in the Flat, Rough World: Balancing Globalization Gone Awry

Introduction The following discussion will explore ongoing economic globalization from the perspective of the dominant organizational form--the transnational corporation (TNC) (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1989). The backdrop to analysis is the that has dramatically changed in the past 30 years. Economic systems across national states have demonstrated a trend of isomorphism. Principles of market-driven economy in a capitalist mould have become nearly universal, suppressing alternatives in the process. Political systems also show a tendency to look alike within the regional and/or global context. In the cultural domain, artefacts from different countries have become more visible globally, engendering advent of world music, international cuisine, shared consumption preferences, and life-styles. These trends toward global isomorphism are studied under the rubric of referring to cross-disciplinary research that ranges from investigative journalism to specialized areas of economics, political science, political economy, cultural studies, and information/information systems. Globalization can be certainly traced further back in the past and tied to intercontinental voyage, trade, and conquest. Still, the pace and magnitude of changes have been unprecedented in the last 30 years. Following this premise, the present discussion focuses only on this period. In addition, just the economic domain is under analysis, while other domains will be addressed only when they are directly related to the economy. Researchers of globalization are not just from academia but also from other occupations, including journalism, politics, and economics. The researchers agree on the basic concept of globalization: barriers to international expanding of economic, political, and cultural structures, actions and products have been diminishing and give rise to global phenomena (Castells, 1996; Friedman, 2007; Fukuyama, 1992; Jones, 2003; Klein, 2008; Levitt, 1983; Stiglitz, 2002, 2006). Many researchers also agree that information, information technology or information and communication technology (either referred to by IT), information systems, and telecommunications networks are the forces behind globalization (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1989; Castells, 1996; Jones, 2003; Levitt, 1983). Financial markets run on global computer networks; firms source, produce, and sell around the owing to interconnected information systems; political processes are affected by economically-relevant information that is promptly disseminated by the Internet and other channels; and TV networks, film, and the Internet communicate globally cultural artefacts, driven by commercial interest or otherwise. However, researchers disagree in valuing results and direction of globalization, its drivers, and the character of information and IT. In valuing globalization results, two confronted camps have morphed. There is a camp of enthusiasts, which values the unfolded globalization as the process that brings benefits to all countries regardless of their economic and political differences (Friedman, 2007; Levitt, 1983). The opposed camp criticizes globalization results, arguing that globalization disproportionally benefits more powerful countries and represents a new form of their domination (Hiatt, 2007; Klein, 2008; Perkins, 2004). The globalization enthusiasts assume that the globalization process is heading toward a higher level of development of the entire human race, a new renaissance, even to finally achievable parting with an undignified history (Fukuyama, 1992). For the globalization critics, however, globalization leads merely to escalating poverty, pollution, famine and other old problems for the majority of people, if not to a new barbarism (Chossudovsky, 2003; Klein, 2008). Researchers also differ in identifications of main drivers of globalization. For some, the chief driver is international or supra-national organizations, such as the International Monetary Fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization (Chossudovsky, 2003; Klein, 2008; Stiglitz, 2003). …

Part IV. Content and Services on Mobile TV and Multimedia Networks

Part IV. Content and Services on Mobile TV and Multimedia Networks

A Mechanism of Initiative Transmission to Send Message on WEBGIS

The paper researched and realized the initiative message transmission mechanism of WEBGIS server based on the N layer architecture of Internet. According to WEBGIS application long business operation as well as server information visualized in client side in real-time features, this article uses the Socket communication and the client side with JAVA Applet to realize that the WEB server can send message initiative to the client. It comes up and realizes a concrete plan of initiative transmission mechanism in WEBGIS. We run the realization plan based on Winsock through the project practice of Guangzhou cable TV network security monitoring and alarm system. The system operation has been verified in system running. The combination of this mechanism with conventional WEBGIS can greatly improve the performance and the usability of WEBGIS.

Broadcast Network Coverage with Multicell Cooperation

Multicell cooperation has been identified as one of the underlying principles for future wireless communication systems. This paper studies the benefits of multicell cooperation in broadcast TV network from an information theoretical perspective. We define outage capacity as the figure of merit and derive the broadcast coverage area to evaluate such system. Specifically, we calculate the broadcast coverage area with given common information rate and outage probabilities when multiple base stations collaboratively transmit the broadcast signals. For the general MIMO case where receivers have multiple antennas, we provide simulation results to illustrate the expanded coverage area. In all cases, our results show that the coverage of a TV broadcast network can be significantly improved by multicell cooperation.

Coproduções na Rede Globo: protagonismo da periferia, sob a ótica da elite

The initiative to invest in co-productions was first undertaken by Globo Network in order to broaden the broadcasting company’s content. Works like “Cidade dos Homens”, “Central da Periferia” and “Antônia” are some recent examples of this partnership. Besides diversifying the social representations, these coproductions in which periphery dwellers are the leading characters, work as a strategy for the TV network to remain in power. Globo network’s editorial focus hasn’t been primarily aimed at the lower income classes, but, when the periphery started largely consuming media, the Cultural Industry was compelled to communicate with their opposites. This article’s objective is to question how the co-productions became a realm for a more plural style in Globo Network. In order to understand these power relations, Antonio Gramsci’s hegemonic theory will be used. Key words: co-productions, television, hegemony.

New Approach for Early Detection of Breast Cancer in Iran.

Abstract Introduction:Approximately 50% of newly diagnosed breast cancers occur in developing countries and it is the most common cancer amongst women in these countries. Majority of patients seek medical help late and in an advanced stage of the disease and there is a lack of national screening program. Moreover, some of these countries suffer from lack of diagnostic and treatment facilities to deal with their symptomatic patients. It seems, therefore, that the pressing need is detection of palpable breast cancer at an early stage.Increasing women's breast cancer awareness by mass education is not only the key to achieve this goal, but it is the basic pre-requisite for implementing the mass screening for breast cancer. Electronic media such as TV programs and Short Message Service (SMS) are easily accessible and relatively cheap in majority of these countries.This study which was designed in Iran and looked at population within one province in this country, aims to study whether the use of electronic media leads to increase patients' awareness and change in their behavior by early presentation and therefore smaller breast tumour on diagnosis and as a result increase in survival.Methods:Semnan province (in the north east of Iran with 588180 populations) was selected as the interventional group and two neighborhood regions with similar population were selected as controls. At first, the knowledge, attitude and practice of women and health care providers during the past year were assessed as a baseline. All public and private health providers were re-educated for breast cancer early detection. The intervention was entitled 'Breast Month', three Breast Month's campaign during two years were planned. In each Breast month, eight 30 minutes TV programs were designed and broadcasted by local TV network and two SMS with short message on breast cancer awareness were sent to 170 000 customers (1.3 lines for each family). The study endpoints include the feasibility of using electronic media for breast cancer awareness and change in knowledge, attitude, and practice of women; breast tumor registration; patients' quality of life and their survival rate in both the case and control groups.Results:The women's knowledge about breast cancer was 67.86% and 71.08% of women had positive attitude to breast cancer early detection. During the control period, the average number of breast self examination (BSE) per woman was 4.68; but 47.6%have not done any BSE by themselves, and 79.50% did not referr to the physician for breast clinical examination and only 8.50% had undergone mammography. During the past year 42 new cases of breast cancer were diagnosed (14.67/105 crude incidence rate and 19.81/105 Age specified Incidence Rate).Conclusions:This study in its first phase has showed It is feasible to use electronic media and sms service in low to middle income countries for breast cancer awareness despite some cultural restrictions. Also there are low baseline level of BSE and very low baseline level of clinical eaxamination and mammography by Iranian women. Increased awareness has resulted in increase detection of breast cancer and the second phase is studying the effect on down staging as a result of increased awareness. Citation Information: Cancer Res 2009;69(24 Suppl):Abstract nr 6074.

Cable-TV-based home video streaming system: practice and experience

This article presents a practical home video streaming system that has actually been implemented and deployed for commercial services on a cable television network. Because streaming components and network connections of a cable TV network are considerably different from those of desktop streaming systems available on the Internet, traditional systems and techniques for video streaming are not enough for a cable TV network. Therefore, several special systems and server-centric streaming techniques have been developed for a cable TV network and home video clients. In particular, server-centric streaming techniques are crucial because a set-top box, which is the client in the case of a home video streaming system, lacks processing power. We have developed a highly efficient streaming server using network acceleration and data bypassing techniques. As a result, our stateof- the-art streaming server enables high scalability and provides various content navigation modes, including faster playback, to off-the-shelf set-top boxes.

National TV broadcasting and the rise of the regulatory state

Using historical, theoretical and empirical arguments, this paper puts forth the notion that it was the rise of US national TV networks in the late 1960s that led to the expansion of federal social regulation and a simultaneous decline of federal economic regulation in the 1970s. The paper argues that national TV networks changed the relative position of national versus local and regional producers and sellers of goods and services. Instead of preferring state and local social regulation, the emerging national firms preferred federal social regulation. Since national markets were emerging, the same national firms lobbied for regulatory reform in transportation and communication services. The rise of national markets associated with national TV networks also stimulated a demand for mergers and consolidations. Data describing these various phenomena are provided in the paper.

Self-organizing algorithms for cache cooperation in content distribution networks

Introduction: The on-demand delivery of video content is anticipated to show tremendous growth over the next few years, driven by the huge popularity of user-generated video clips and the expansion of VoD libraries. Even stronger growth is likely to be fueled by the proliferation of IPTV services with personalized features such as CatchUp/PauseLive TV and NPVR capabilities. The common characteristic of these ‘time-shifted’ TV services, as well as VoD libraries and sites like YouTube, is that users can select from a vast collection of content material at any time they want. This runs counter to the broadcast paradigm embraced in conventional TV networks, and raises a need for unicast sessions, increasing the overall bandwidth demands by orders of magnitude. Caching strategies provide an effective mechanism for mitigating the massive bandwidth requirements associated with large-scale distribution of personalized high-definition video content. In essence, caching strategies exploit storage capacity to absorb traffic by replicating the most popular content closer to the network edge rather than storing it in a central location. The reduction in the traffic load translates into a smaller required transport capacity and capital expense as well as fewer performance bottlenecks, thus enabling better service quality at a lower price. In the present paper we develop light-weight distributed cooperative content placement algorithms so as to maximize the traffic volume served from cache, and thus minimize the bandwidth cost. As a canonical scenario, we focus on a cluster of distributed caches, connected either directly, or via a parent node, and formulate the content placement problem as an integer linear program in order to obtain a benchmark of the globally optimal performance. Under certain symmetry assumptions, the optimal solution of the relaxed linear program is found to have a rather simple structure. Besides interesting in its own right, the knowledge of the optimal structure offers useful insight for the design of low-complexity cooperative content placement and eviction algorithms. The performance of the proposed distributed algorithms is proved to be within a small constant factor from the performance of an optimal centralized scheme, while requiring only limited knowledge of global popularities, even in asymmetric scenarios. In contrast to [1, 2], we will focus on specific topologies, motivated by real system deployments, and use the insight from the linear program and the simple structure of its optimal solution to develop efficient distributed content placement algorithms with far more favorable performance ratios than the ones in [1, 2].

Psychiatry and All That Jazz Are Parallel Passions

Psychiatry and All That Jazz Are Parallel Passions