NAB Research Grants
2006 Recipients’ Abstracts
The NAB Grants for Research in Broadcasting Program is
designed to stimulate and support scholarly investigation of the
commercial broadcast industry, especially research on economic,
business, social or policy issues. The goal is to make high quality
academic research available to industry practitioners and other
academics. The following abstracts are from projects funded in 2006.
Final reports will be completed by May 2007. If you require further
information on these projects, please contact the authors at the listed
e-mail addresses or email kfox@nab.org.
A Study of Effective Televised
Hurricane Evacuation Messages
Mary Blue, Ph.D. and Nancy McKenzie Dupont,
Ph.D.
Loyola University
New Orleans, LA
mblue@loyno.edu & ndupont@loyno.edu
The purpose of this study is to attempt to
assess the effectiveness of the televised messages advocating the
evacuation of New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina. This will be
achieved by surveying the audience of those messages who then made a
decision to leave or stay. The research will be conducted in three
steps. First, focus groups will be conducted to determine the dimensions
of the problem. In the second step, information gathered from the focus
groups will be used to construct a survey instrument. The survey will be
distributed two ways. First, an online survey will be linked from web
sites that are popular with New Orleanians, such as nola.com, television
station web sites, and local school and university web sites. Second,
the survey will be given in written form to segments of the population
who do not use the internet and to those who live in areas of the city
most damaged by the storm. In the final step, the data will be submitted
to statistical analysis using SPSS.
Linguistic Market Segmentation and
Audience Valuation by Television Advertisers
Amy Jo Coffey
University of Georgia
Athens, GA
jcoffey@uga.edu
While previous research has provided insights into the predictors of
audience valuation by advertisers, no study to date has examined the
effect of language on audience valuation. This study seeks to do that as
well as to identify the factors that best predict television
advertisers' valuation of ethnic audiences. In addition, it will track
demographic and industry trends over a 20-year period to note what
relationships exist between demographic group growth, language use,
network launches, and advertising revenue, in order to determine whether
ethnic programming supply has kept pace with demand. This research will
help broadcasters understand and identify the factors in niche audiences
that are most attractive to advertisers. The study will examine the
interaction of such factors as audience size, age, ethnicity, income,
and linguistic isolation as they affect advertiser interest in that
audience sector. Results of the study may help broadcasters more quickly
identify new niche audiences as they begin to acquire value. In turn,
this could assist broadcasters with long-term programming and resource
allocation decisions.
From Newscasts to Podcasts: Next Generation Local TV
Websites
George L. Daniels, Ph.D.
University of Alabama
Tuscaloosa, AL
gdaniels@ua.edu
his study seeks to go behind the scenes with early adopters of
podcasting technology for local news in an effort to document the
philosophies and conceptualization of a local station's web strategy in
2006. Is it just about extending a station's brand or is it about adding
viewers who might not otherwise see the over-the-air product? Just as
important is how these new technologies affect the workflows and
processes of the local television newsroom. The study design includes 10
stations in five media markets: Chicago, Washington, DC, Raleigh, NC,
Des Moines, IA and Omaha, NE all have stations that provide podcasts of
news content. The fact that they are offering podcasts makes these 10
stations great examples of the "next generation" television web sites.
In addition to making a contribution to the scholarly literature, the
findings will have implications to be shared with television news
managers and broadcast journalism educators.
Does Visual Clutter in TV Newscasts Depress Viewer Memory for an
Accompanying Visually Evocative Anchor Narration?
Tom Grimes, Ph.D. and Lori Bergen, Ph.D.
Kansas State University
Manhattan, KS
grimes@ksu.edu & lbergen@ksu.edu
Deborah
Potter, MA
NewsLab
Chevy Chase, MD
potter@newslab.org
In a previous study, we discovered that the visual clutter presented
on cable news services significantly depresses viewer memory for the
information news anchors present. We also discovered, using attentional
tracking methodology, that most of a viewer's attentional processing
capacity is co-opted by the visual clutter. But why would a news story's
visuals affect the way the auditory channel is attended to? There are,
after all, centers in the brain devoted to auditorially conveyed
information. However, when there is visual clutter on the screen, it may
co-opt those visual processing centers and rob them of their ability to
spatially process concepts that are auditorially conveyed by the news
anchor. If we could demonstrate how visual clutter makes comprehension
of a news anchor narrative - rich in visually evocative words - more
difficult to attend to, we could provide broadcasters compelling
evidence for why they should clean up the visual environment in which
they present the news. Alternatively - presuming our hypotheses are
supported - we plan to prescribe ways to write a narration that is more
compatible within these visually cluttered formats currently favored by
television news.
Identifying Factors for Success in Rural Community Radio
Jim Grubbs, Ph.D.
University of Illinois at Springfield
Springfield, IL
grubbs.jim@uis.edu
In many cases, stations in rural, unranked markets that
are geographically close to medium and major markets have been purchased
for the purpose of gaining an in-road into the larger market, even
though no frequency assignments are available. The result of this is the
loss of a local voice for listeners in the affected markets. In spite of
this trend, locally owned stations continue to thrive in some rural
markets. Using a case study approach, this research will seek to
identify the economic and programming approaches that lead to success.
Unranked stations in Illinois will be surveyed to determine four of the
best, locally owned success stories. In-person, structured, and recorded
interviews with key personnel in each case study will be used to gather
data indicative of successful practices. The public file will be
reviewed and on-air programming will be monitored.
The Impact of Mobile TV: Its Adoption and Use in Everyday Life
Seung-Hyun Lee
University of Wisconsin-Madison
Madison, WI
shlee9@wisc.edu
The main purpose of the study is to explore (1) how and why people
adopt and use mobile TV service, (2) the impact of mobile TV on the
telecommunications and broadcasting industries, individuals' everyday
lives, social involvement, and consumer media consumption habits, and
(3) user responses to mobile TV. The study proposes to examine the
factors influencing the adoption decision and use of mobile TV, and who
the early adopters of mobile TV are. This study focuses on the world's
first mobile TV, DMB of Korea, which was launched in 2005. It will be an
important model for American mobile TV, whose commercial service will be
launched soon. A national online survey, in-depth interviews and passive
observations of mobile TV users will be conducted for this study.
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