Student Resources

Learning Objectives

Chapter 1

Convergence: Understand how media is coming together, blurring the lines of previously distinct communication forms such as broadcast, cable, telephone, computers, and mail.

Divergence: Discuss how wide implementation of newer information technologies may be affected by consumer acceptance and government regulation.

The “Players”: Answer the question; what roles will broadcast, cable, telephone, computers, and newspapers play in delivering information and entertainment to media consumers?

Roles: Distinguish between electronic media and common carriers, focusing on content and legal responsibilities.

Broadcasting: Define broadcasting, and differentiate it from other electronic media.

Hybridization: Explore how media roles and functions are changing within the industry.

The future: Understand how technological advances will offer a wider array of program options and how these options will never completely replace over-the-air or local broadcasting.

Chapter 2

Precedents: Describe what happened—or existed—before radio broadcasting.

Broadcasting’s beginnings: Recount early broadcast experiments and initial broadcast operations.

Monopoly: Discuss why government control of radio did not occur in the United States after World War I, when most countries took such an approach.

Broadcasting’s growth: Outline how the fledgling broadcast industry grew, and indicate who and what influenced its growth through 1928.

Network development: Discuss reasons for emergence of networks in the late 1920s.

Broadcast regulation: Describe the changing role of government in relation to wire and wireless, regulation of early broadcasting, failure of early laws to address broadcasting’s problems adequately, and passage of the Radio Act of 1927.

AM radio’s transformation: Describe the evolution of AM radio from the golden years in the 1930s and 1940s to radio’s struggle to survive in the 1950s and 1960s.

FM radio’s emergence: Recount initial problems facing FM’s development, and describe how FM overcame these problems to emerge by the 1970s as the dominant radio force.

Television’s evolution: Delineate television’s technological development from mechanical to electronic systems. Describe changes made from the 1950s “live” decade to film and later videotape recording.

Television’s impact on radio: Outline changes in radio brought about by television’s introduction.

Controversies and crises: Give an account of the conflicts in ethical practices and programming excesses that faced radio and television in their formative years.

Chapter 3

Cable television: Trace cable's evolution and describe how it has changed traditional broadcasting.

Domsats and superstations: Describe how domestic satellites and superstations transformed cable from small mom and pop operations into the national multiple system operators (MSOs) of today.

Upgraded and other cable services: Identify advances in cable services that increase user interactivity such as digital cable, pay-per-view and video on demand and understand other diversified services such as broadband and telephone over cable.

Satellite services: Outline the current status of satellite programming services including direct broadcast satellite (DBS) and satellite radio and how these services have changed the competitive landscape.

Competitive systems: Evaluate the relevance of multi channel multipoint distribution services (MMDS and LMDS), and master antenna and satellite master antenna television (MATV and SMATV, respectively) in today's video marketplace.

Telephone company competition: Understand and appreciate the impact upon today's media of the entry of the telephone companies into home consumer video and information markets.

Development of the Internet: Understand the development and growth of the Internet, how data are transmitted in this digital domain, and the proliferation of services available using the Internet.

Microelectronics: Understand how the microelectronic industry has revolutionized home entertainment.

Recording devices: Appreciate the capabilities of VCRs and other technologies such as digital audio tape (DAT), videodiscs, CDs, and MP3 in giving consumers more control over entertainment time and choices.

Interactive media: Comprehend implications of on-line services and interactive media now and in the future.

Changing media market: Understand the changing nature of the multichannel program distribution market and the competition to control content.

Chapter 4

Electromagnetism: Describe the characteristics of electromagnetic energy.

Electromagnetic spectrum: Understand the properties and uses of electromagnetic spectrum.

Sound waves: Describe sound waves, and recognize their differences from and similarities to radio waves.

Radio waves: Delineate the characteristics of radio waves, and understand the relationship between frequency and wavelength.

Modulation: Understand signals as energy patterns, and understand how sidebands, channels, and modulation methods differ.

Wave propagation: Describe how waves travel through space and how direct waves, ground waves, and sky waves differ. Understand how and why coverage contours vary.

Antennas: Understand how reception, transmission, and signal direction are influenced by antennas.

Interference: Differentiate between co channel and adjacent channel interference.

AM stations: Comprehend the characteristics of a standard broadcasting, or AM, station, its location in the spectrum, channel width, power, antenna characteristics, carrier current operation, and classes of channels and stations.

FM stations: Describe the characteristics of FM broadcasting stations in terms of the FM channel, signal coverage area and quality, station classes, and the possibilities for multiplexing FM services.

Short wave broadcasting: Differentiate among AM, FM, and short wave services and wave propagation.

Electronic pictures: Describe in detail how an electronic picture is processed.

The TV signal: Comprehend how a television signal is produced and what its important components are: lines per frame, auxiliary signals, sound, and color production.

The TV channel: Understand the components of and difference between VHF and UHF television channels, including channel width, picture quality, and location in the spectrum.

Signal transmission and reception: Note the components of an operational television system, including studio operations and the transmission and reception of television signals.

Digital transmission: Understand how digital media work and differences between analog and digital television transmission and reception.

Solid state devices: Describe components which make up solid-state devices, including transistors (or semiconductors), chips, time-base correctors, LCDs, and CCDs, and the influence of this miniaturization on industry and receiver technology.

Chapter 5

Role of storage: Understand why programmers and electronic media executives are concerned with recording and storing programs for later use.

Terrestrial relays: Understand the need for networking, and describe the evolution of networking via Earth based technologies. Trace the progress from the development of coaxial cable through the use of microwave relays to today’s advances in delivery systems using fiber optics.

Satellite relays: Comprehend the relationship of satellite relays to terrestrial relays. Outline the advantages and disadvantages of satellite relays. Understand how geostationary orbits, spectrum allocations for satellites, satellite transmission, and signal reception work.

Fiber-optic relays: Describe how fiber-optic relays work, their advantages, and both domestic and international implications.

Cable television: Summarize the components of cable systems, and understand how cable works.

Networking and switching: Comprehend differences and similarities in “networking” between telephone and traditional mass media networks for broadcasting and cable. Summarize switching and its influence on current and future voice, data, and video transmission.

Internet: Understand the proliferation of personal computer services available through networks and how data are transmitted in this digital domain.

Mobile Services: Identify the emerging services in the delivery of TV programs to mobile devices.

Chapter 6

Commercial broadcast stations: Outline the organizational structure of commercial radio and television broadcast stations. Understand the influence of group ownership.

Commercial broadcast networks: Describe a network's management structure and its relationship with affiliates and how independent stations fit into such a design.

Cable: Delineate cable's basic structural composition, and describe the program services available via cable.

Vertical integration: Understand what vertical integration is, and explain how the concept applies to media.

Advertising on electronic media: Describe advantages and disadvantages of broadcast and cable advertising for advertisers at the local, regional, and national levels.

Commercials, promos, PSAs, and IDs: Differentiate among regular commercial announcements and promotional, public service, and station identification announcements.

Advertising rates: Comprehend how media set advertising rates, and identify the factors that influence the prices charged to advertisers.

Advertising sales: Describe differences among local, regional, national, and spot sales, and describe the role of advertising agencies in the sale and development of commercial messages.

Proof of performance: Understand how media prove to clients that spots ran as scheduled and how commercial tracking devices help advertisers and agencies.

Advertising standards: Discuss sponsor identification, time standards, government regulation, and media self-regulation. Comprehend concerns about deceptive ads and unethical practices.

Cable revenue: Describe nonadvertising Distributors of income for cable television, including subscription fees and pay per view.

Personnel: Understand who works in the media, salary scales, the influence of unions, and employment opportunities.

Capital investment: Describe how monetary sources influence electronic media's structure, services, and operations.

Ownership turnover: Summarize how ownership restrictions, competition, and economic conditions affect sales and prices of media outlets and program services.

Profit and loss: Understand concerns about media profitability and the bottom line mentality, and describe how these concerns manifest themselves in media product and structure. 

Chapter 7

Development of public broadcasting: Describe how public broadcasting evolved since the 1920s from a handful of educational AM stations. Understand the leverage used by commercial broadcasters on educational and public broadcasting, the function of channel reservations for educational and public broadcasting, and the influence on noncommercial broadcasting of the Sixth Report and Order and the Carnegie Commission.

Public broadcasting structure: Understand the roles of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), Public Broadcasting System (PBS), National Public Radio (NPR), and Public Radio International (PRI) in delivering network programs.

Station structure: Comprehend differences among various ownership approaches to noncommercial broadcasting.

Economics of public broadcasting: Describe the diverse ways public broadcasting receives funding.

Programming and program sources: Outline program sources available to noncommercial stations and the types of programming produced and aired.

Audiences: Understand the composition of noncommercial audiences and needs served by noncommercial programming, especially those of children.

The future of noncommercial broadcasting: Assess conflicts over public broadcasting's role in American society, and note possible future changes.

Chapter 8

Economic constraints: Understand ways commercial programmers find themselves constrained and how they cope with limitations.

Scheduling practices: Comprehend programmers’ concerns for audience flow, and understand scheduling strategies used by broadcast and cable networks and local outlets to maintain flow.

Local, syndicated, and network distribution paths: Understand the three primary ways programming is distributed among electronic media. Identify what constitutes locally originating programming. Understand how syndication works and how exclusive broadcast rights affects what viewers receive on television. Discern similarities and differences in syndication among television, cable and radio. Understand the differences between network and syndicated programs.

Creating entertainment, news, and sports content: Comprehend how broadcast and cable networks obtain their programming, its costs, major production facilities, cable only productions, and co productions. Discern how news and sports programs differ at network and local levels, and understand how they are produced.

Program types: Describe the various options or classifications in programming. Distinguish between format and genre and identify the characteristics of various entertainment and information genres.

Public affairs, sports, and children programs: Understand the role that network news and public affairs programs on broadcast and cable play in informing the American public and in establishing a network’s image. Outline the importance of various networks’ sports coverage to viewers, advertisers, and networks themselves, and discuss concerns related to such coverage. Delineate issues and concerns surrounding cable and broadcast programs aimed at children.

Program promotion: Describe various promotional efforts used by cable and broadcast operations as essential components of successful programming.

Internet programming: Understand how the Internet supplement today’s electronic media, and how it may rival contemporary media in delivery of audio and video in the future.

Programs and the public interest: Highlight critique of electronic media output as a “vast wasteland” and differentiate between popular taste and bad taste.

Chapter 9

The ratings business: Understand how and why Arbitron, Nielsen, and their competitors collect and use data on audiences for local, network, and syndicated clients.

Collecting data: Describe different methods of gathering ratings data: diaries, passive meters, people meters, coincidentals, recall, personal interviews.

Samples: Comprehend how sampling works, and understand sampling error, response rate, and sampling deficiencies.

Determining ratings and shares: Describe market delineation; units of measure; how ratings, HUT, and shares are derived; and the meanings of cume and demographics.

Use and abuse of ratings: Understand industry self policing measures, the reliability and validity of ratings, and problems with ratings such as hyping.

Broadcast audiences: Discern who makes up electronic media audiences and how knowledge about audiences affects what media do.

Remote controls: Describe remote control device impact on viewing habits.

Cable audiences: Discern who makes up cable audiences, how cable ratings are reported, and what viewing patterns exist for cable programs.

Research on VCRs: Comprehend how VCRs have changed audiences and affected ratings gathered for electronic media.

Internet use: Understand how audiences accessing Internet sites may be measured as the medium becomes more important in advertising.

Attitudinal research: Describe how researchers try to find out people's subjective reactions, such as what people like and dislike.

Chapter 10

Media effects research: Understand key terms relevant to the study of media effects such as media, effects, and theory and review the strengths and limitations of research methods used by media researchers.

Communication process model: Identify the elements of simple communication process models

Early research: Understand the history of effects research and its role in policy making research and selection of research topics.

Media effects theories: Differentiate among cultivation, social learning, spiral of silence, third person effect, and agenda setting theories and understand the perspectives on media effects each theory provides.

Active audience: Comprehend theories that explain how consumers use media, process media content, and interact with media technology and describe the variables associated with uses and gratifications, elaboration likelihood model, brand marketing theory, and technological determinism.

Effects of media violence: Understand the critical skills necessary to evaluate the process and results of media effects research.

Chapter 11

Federal jurisdiction: Understand why Congress has power to regulate electronic media and that authority is delegated to the Federal Communications Commission.

Broadcasting and the public interest: Comprehend the definition of “broadcasting,” and discuss “public interest” definitions.

Federal Communications Commission (FCC): Delineate the FCC commissioners and staff roles and understand FCC rule making.

Licensing: Understand station ownership, mutually exclusive applications, how one finds a channel, licensee qualifications, and services that require no license.

Station operations: Describe FCC monitoring of stations’ performance and how stations control programs, develop employment practices, keep their public file, and keep abreast of changes in regulations.

License renewal: Delineate how applicants and stations apply for licenses.

Cable franchising: Outline local authorities’ role in franchising, and describe franchising a cable system and renewing the franchise.

Telecommunications Act of 1996: Realize how this revision of electronic media and telecommunications rules evolved and its effect on communication media.

Ownership diversification: Understand why diversification is an FCC goal and what is meant by multiple ownership, cross media ownership, minority ownership, and network ownership of media outlets.

Deregulation: Describe deregulatory theories, and describe deregulation’s impact on electronic media.

Other laws and regulations: Understand how other laws affect electronic mass media: international treaties, press law, advertising regulation, lottery laws, equal employment opportunity regulations, and state and local laws.  Informal controls: Comprehend how Congress “micromanages” the FCC through oversight, and describe consumer and industry groups’ influence on electronic media.

Chapter 12

First Amendment rights: Outline protections found in the First Amendment for freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and religious freedom.

Marketplace of ideas: Understand promoting a wide open discussion of ideas.

State action: Describe the differences between government or state action and private action.

Unprotected speech: Delineate between protected and unprotected speech, especially defamation and obscenity.

Chilling effect: Outline the causes of self censorship and its effects.

First Amendment parity: Describe what is meant by “parity” and why broadcasting and cable are regulated differently than print media.

Political access: Describe equal opportunities and reasonable access for political candidates and how news organizations cover candidates.

Public access: Understand the concepts of localism, right of reply, access for advertisers, and the Fairness Doctrine’s evolution and demise.

Copyright: Comprehend copyright basics and how they apply to music licensing, cable, and newer technologies, especially the Internet.

Changing perspectives: Describe how technological and deregulatory changes in the media alter assumptions about the First Amendment.

Chapter 13

National character: Note how electronic media reflect each nation's character.

Political philosophies: Differentiate among authoritarian, libertarian, communist, social responsibility, developmental, and democratic-participant philosophies that influence how electronic media is controlled.

Deregulation: Comprehend how deregulatory philosophies have influenced the telecommunications world.

Legal foundations: Understand how international and domestic laws influence a nation's electronic media.

Access: Describe differences among political, citizen, and group access to electronic media and the Internet for various nations.

Economics: Comprehend how a nation's economic structure influences the structure of its electronic media.

Geography: Understand how spillover and coverage create problems and opportunities for nations.

Programs and schedules: Describe how news and public affairs programs are developed in different countries, and discuss how programs and program schedules are formed.

Transborder communication: Note how and why nations broadcast to other countries, and describe the different services such as the Radio Free Europe, Radio Free Asia, Voice of Russia, and Voice of America.

International distribution: Examine the technological platforms used in global communications