that formal study of the craft of editing television news appears to have suffered from a lack of a conventional vocabulary for describing and analyzing structural techniques used in what is primarily an audio-visual phenomenon, maintaining that television journalists have traditionally learned the evolving art of news shooting and editing through an immersion process that does not readily lend itself to conscious articulation of forms. Hence, it should not be too surprising that discussions of the evolution of trends in journalistic editing are often based on scant anecdotal evidence.
The ‘dearth of formal analysis’ is something that can be easily remedied: the materials are easy to access and the methods are well known. A question worth exploring is why has no one done this research?
A few weeks ago I posted a draft version of a paper on the statistical analysis of style in BBC news bulletins (here), and I am currently part way through a similar paper on news broadcasts on ITV. But until then, here are some papers worth reading on television style that address various issues that have been raised elsewhere on this blog.
viewers’ attention and memory, Journal of Marketing Communications 9 (1): 17–28.
This study investigated the effects of advertising pacing (i.e. the number of visual cuts in an advertisement) on viewers’ voluntary and involuntary attention to an advertisement, as well as its effects on the recall of claim-related and non-claim-related components of the advertisement. Using a limited capacity model of information processing/retrieval as its theoretical base and physiologically oriented measures of attention, this study provided some evidence that fast-paced advertisements (as compared to slower paced ones) may have a positive effect on viewers’ involuntary (automatic) attention towards an advertisement, but have little differential effect on their voluntary attention. Furthermore, it appeared that the enhanced involuntary attention gained through the use of fast-paced advertisements comes in the form of attention directed towards the non-claim (advertisement executional) elements of an advertisement as opposed to the message-based (copy) elements of the advertisement. The practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.
A scene is proposed as the unit of analysis in broadcast news studies as a way to measure a more accurate representation of perspectives and arguments of a story. Based on film studies, a scene is defined as a unit that represents continuity in time, place, character, ideas, or themes in a news story. The role of a scene in a news story is analyzed by examining how the position, length, and proportion of a scene frame and valence are related to story frame and valence.
McCollum JF and Bryant J 1999 Pacing in children’s television programming, Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication, 4-7 August 1999, New Orleans, LA.
Pak H 2007 The Effects of Incongruity, Production Pacing, and Sensation Seeking on TV Advertisements, unpublished Ph.D. Thesis, Cornell University.
This study addresses an important area of research that has fascinated advertising professionals who are eager to make more attractive ads: understanding how the viewing audience perceives and processes television advertisements. Ad incongruity, the introduction of unexpected elements that are atypical of a given ad category, and production pacing were tested to explore the roles of these stimuli in capturing higher levels of arousal, which can produce both better evaluations and clearer memories of ads. Sixty subjects, who were recruited from among undergraduate students at Cornell University and patrons of a local shopping mall, participated in an experiment in which a set of TV ads was shown. Participants then answered questions immediately following exposure to the ads, providing data pertaining to sensation seeking, ad evaluation, arousal, and memory. The ads themselves represented six different conditions: incongruent and slow paced, incongruent and medium paced, incongruent and fast paced, congruent and slow paced, congruent and medium paced, and congruent and fast paced. The main findings involved Lang?s limited capacity model. It was found that the mental capacity or cognitive load required to process incongruent fast-paced ads exceeded study participants? cognitive capacity to process the information in such ads. When ads with both fast paced and incongruent elements were shown, participant?s memory for that particular kind of ads declined. The study provided confirmation of Lang?s (2000) limited capacity model. The study?s contributions include a key finding pertaining to incongruity effects that should help to resolve discrepancies in the literature on incongruity. As expected, incongruent ads were evaluated more positively, and were more arousing and better remembered than congruent ads. Production pacing also had some effect on participants. As pacing increased, participants remembered better and ad evaluations tended to be more positive. However, ad type had a significant influence on the processing of ads. Car ads were evaluated more positively, were more arousing, and were better remembered than over-the-counter drug ads. There were no significant relationships between sensation seeking and incongruity or sensation seeking and production pacing.
Schaefer RJ and Martinez TJ 2009 Trends in network news editing strategies from 1969 through 2005, Journal of Broadcasting and Electronic Media 53 (3): 347-364.
Four editing variables were tracked through a content analysis of U.S. commercial network editing that spanned a 36-year period. The analysis revealed that synthetic-montage increased and continuity-realism decreased from 1969 through 1997. Network news editors also embraced faster pacing, shorter soundbites, and more special effects between 1969 and 2005. When taken together, the results suggest that U.S. network television journalism has evolved from more “camera of record” and realistic news techniques in favor of a variety of synthetic editing strategies that convey complex audio-visual arguments.
Lillard AS and Petersen J 2011 The immediate impact of different types of television on young children’s executive function, Pediatrics 128 (4): doi: 10.1542/peds.2010-1919.
Objective: The goal of this research was to study whether a fast-paced television show immediately influences preschool-aged children’s executive function (eg, self-regulation, working memory).
Methods: Sixty 4-year-olds were randomly assigned to watch a fast-paced television cartoon or an educational cartoon or draw for 9 minutes. They were then given 4 tasks tapping executive function, including the classic delay-of-gratification and Tower of Hanoi tasks. Parents completed surveys regarding television viewing and child’s attention.
Results: Children who watched the fast-paced television cartoon performed significantly worse on the executive function tasks than children in the other 2 groups when controlling for child attention, age, and television exposure.
Conclusions: Just 9 minutes of viewing a fast-paced television cartoon had immediate negative effects on 4-year-olds’ executive function. Parents should be aware that fast-paced television shows could at least temporarily impair young children’s executive function.
Following on from my use of running Mann-Whitney Z statistics to look at the time series structure of Top Hat (here), this week I have the first draft of an analysis of 15 BBC news bulletins using the same method.
Shot length data from 15 news bulletins broadcast at 1300, 1800, and 2200 on BBC 1 between 11 April 2011 and 15 April 2011, inclusive, is used to compare the editing style between different bulletins broadcast at different times on different days and to examine the time series structure by identifying clusters of shots short and long duration. The results show there is no evidence that shot length distributions of BBC news bulletins vary with the time or day of broadcast, and the style of editing is consistent across the sample. There is also no evidence the highly structured format of television news is related to the time series of shot lengths beyond the opening title sequence, which is associated with a cluster of short shots in every bulletin. The number, order, and location of clusters of longer and shorter shots is different for each bulletin; and there are several examples of abrupt transitions between different editing regimes, but no evidence of any cycles present in the time series. Although there is no overall common pattern to the editing, there are some consistent features in the time series for these bulletins: clusters of shorter shots are associated with footage derived from non-BBC sources (library footage, other broadcasters, public information films) and montage sequences; while clusters of shots of longer duration are associated with shots in which the viewer is addressed directly by the presenter or reporter (including graphics), live-two-way interviews, and speeches or interviews with key actors in a news item.