Thesis (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering; and, (M.S.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Political Science, 1977. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ENGINEERING. / Includes bibliographical references. / by Zale Anis. / M.S.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Urban Studies and Planning, 1981. / MICROFICHE COPY AVAILABLE IN ARCHIVES AND ROTCH. / Includes bibliographies. / by William Gaston Polk, Jr. / Ph.D.

Cable Franchise Fees and PEG Fees function as key resources to the longevity of local media. Critics of the fees suggest that revenue earned from them is misplaced, and/or misused. This research examines the budgets of twenty US cities to determine how much money cities are collecting from these fees and where these funds are spent in an attempt to determine if the actual usages of Franchise and PEG Fee revenue corresponds to their theoretical benefits.

The background to the thesis is the decentralization trend which has led to the development of various forms of local radio and television in a number of countries, including Sweden. Common to all official statements regarding the emergence of local media is the theme that local media has a potential for strengthening democracy. The aim is formulated as: to what extent can investigations into audience and participation in Swedish local media be considered indicators of whether these media contribute to the generally-accepted democratic aims of society? Special attention is also given to a study of the research field of "local mass communication" i this has been achieved with the help of a bibliographical analysis of the documents listed in the NORDICOM-bibliography for the years 1975-1980. The audience and participation analysis is based upon: (a) the author's own studies from the cable-tv experiment in Kiruna 1974/75; (b) secondary analyses of studies of audience and participation in Swedish local and neighbourhood radio 1979/80; and (c) the author's own data on local radio from a study in Västerbotten in 1978. The analyses in the thesis are based on two ideal models for the democracy-media relationship - the ideal-democratic model and the critical model. The results show that there is support for both models, i.e. local broadcasting media seems to both reach low-resource people and generate participation in various forms. On the other hand, from the point of view of the critical model, it seems as if participants represent well-established groups in society. The cable-tv data also indicates that activation effects are larger among the highly-edu-cated members of the audience. Other results demonstrate that the following factors are decisive for audience structure: size of the broadcasting area, occupation, and the listener's distance from the transmitting area. Factors that are critical for participation and contact-tendency are organizational activity and previous attempts to achieve influence in community matters. / digitalisering@umu

My thesis explores what I call the "Sopranos Experience," which draws upon both the historical conventions of the gangster genre as well as the aesthetics and economics of pay-cable television to complicate The Sopranos' (HBO, 1999-2007) psychological relationship with the 21st-century, neoliberal American audience. The Sopranos Experience explicates how wavering identifications and dis-identifications that develop for the spectator through the series' form and content draw the responsibility of an audience away from moral ultimatums that attempt to finalize their experience with the genre, and towards a more personal ethical entanglement with the characters and their socioeconomic anxieties and desires. The ethical entanglement highlighted by The Sopranos reveals an entanglement that has always existed for the gangster genre throughout its history that has been recognized, but not thoroughly explored by previous gangster scholarship. Because of the The Sopranos' psychotherapy story arc through Tony's (James Gandolfini) relationship with Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), psychoanalysis plays a key role in the Sopranos Experience. The serial form and narrowcasting develop a more in-depth psychological relationship between the spectator and the characters than seen in previous gangster genre films. Through the psychoanalytic theory of Jean Laplanche, I argue the spectator's closer relationship with the series not only results in the spectator's constitution of self through the fictional characters, but that this constitution of self extends into their lived, everyday experiences with others. In this discussion of the psychological connection between the spectator and the characters, their shared anxieties about and desires for socioeconomic stability in a neoliberal environment mobilizes the spectator's relationship not just with the series, but with others in their lives. In recognizing their atomized role in the viewership experience, The Sopranos allows the spectator to make ethical demands about their atomization and vulnerability in a neoliberal society. Because they can recognize the collective's similar situation, the spectator is situated to make larger demands about socioeconomic systems that atomize the individual.

This report observes food commercials within children programming on English and Spanish television networks (cable channels and broadcast channels). With advertisements greatly influencing food consumption, this repost was based on the assumption that Spanish advertisements tailored to Hispanics differed from English advertisements in frequency and content. If so, could this be a contributing factor as to why Hispanic children tend to be more overweight compared to their general market? Through observation, analysis and reviewing past studies, this report established that there is a difference of frequency and content within food commercials aired on the two television categories. However, the difference was unexpected. In reality, Spanish channels air more PSAs and fewer food commercials compared to English networks. Besides the different frequency of food advertisements on these channels, the intended audiences also differed within Spanish and English television. / text

This dissertation consists of three essays that study mergers and consolidation in the Canadian cable television industry. The first essay provides a historical overview of regulatory and technical change in the industry, and presents the dataset that I constructed for this study. The basic pattern of interest in the data is regional consolidation, where dominant cable companies grow over time by acquiring the cablesystems of small cable operators. I perform a reduced-form empirical analysis that formally studies the determinants of mergers, and the effect that acquisitions have on cable bundles offered to consumers. The remaining essays develop and estimate structural econometric models to further study the determinants and welfare consequences of mergers in the industry. The second essay estimates an empirical analogue of the Farrell and Scotchmer (1988) coalition- formation game. I use the estimated model to measure the equilibrium impact that economies of scale and agglomeration has on firms’ acquisition incentives. I also study the impact entry and merger subsidies have on consolidation and long-run market structure. The final chapter estimates a variant of the Rochet and Stole (2002) model of multi-product monopoly with endogenous quality and prices. Using the estimated model I compute the impact mergers have on welfare. I find that both consumer and producer surplus rise with acquisitions. I also show that accounting for changes both in prices and products (i.e., cable bundle quality) is important for measuring the welfare impact of mergers. / Thesis (Ph.D, Economics) -- Queen's University, 2010-12-09 14:39:15.431

Thesis (M.S.)--University of North Texas, Aug., 2007. / Title from title page display. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of California, San Diego, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 295-323).

Thesis (M.S.)--Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, 1997. / Source: Masters Abstracts International, Volume: 45-06, page: 2725. Typescript. Abstract precedes thesis as preliminary leaves [1-2]. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 30-31).