Key Words

Ch. 1: Understanding Mass Media, Convergence, and the Importance of

Media Literacy
-​ Media: Platforms or vehicles that industries have developed for the purpose of creating
and circulating messages.
-​ Media Convergence: When products typically linked to one medium show up on many
media.
-​ Hyper-connected: A household that contains ten or more internet-capable devices
-​ Audience fragmentation: The process of dividing the audience members into segments
based on background and lifestyle in order to send them messages targeted to their
specific characteristics
-​ ‘Mass-media’ audiences dispersed or broken up; From mass audiences to niche
audiences
-​ Mass production process: The industrial process that creates the potential for reaching
millions, even billions, of diverse, anonymous people at around the same time
-​ Industrial nature: the aspect of industrialised — or mass production — processes
involved in creating the material that distinguishes mass communication from other
forms of communication. This industrial process creates the potential for reaching billions
of diverse, anonymous people simultaneously
-​ Communication: Refers to people interacting in ways that at least one of the parties
involved understands as messages
-​ Mass communication: The industrialised production and multiple distribution of
messages through technological devices.
-​ Mass media: The technological vehicles through which mass communication takes place
(note that the term “mass media” is plural and refers to more than one vehicle; the
singular version is mass medium)
-​ Mass media outlets: Companies that send out messages via mass media
-​ Convergence: The ability of different media to easily interact with each other because
they all deal with information in the same digital form
-​ Social currency: Media content used as coins of exchange in everyday interpersonal
discussions
-​ Parasocial interaction: The psychological connections that some media users establish
with celebrities whom they learn about through the mass media
-​ Surveillance: Using the media to learn about what is happening in the world around us
-​ Interpretation: Using the media to find out why things are happening—who or what is the
cause—and what to do about them
-​ Interactivity: The ability to track and respond to any actions triggered by the end user in
order to cultivate a rapport
-​ Media literacy: The ability to apply critical thinking skills to the mass media, thereby
becoming a more aware and responsible citizen—parent, voter, worker—in our
media-driven society
 -​ Acquire competence and critical skills to understand media (forms, content,
genres, etc) and the experiences of using them in daily life

Ch. 3: The Business of Media

-​ Platforms: Technologies or computer systems that can be deployed or programmed to
function in many ways for the production, distribution and display of media forms, e.g.,
YouTube
-​ Industries: Systems or organisations of mass communication. Industries finance,
produce, exhibit and sell (mass) media products.
-​ Media practitioners: The people who select or create the material that a mass media firm
produces, distributes, or exhibits
-​ Psychographics: A way to differentiate among people or groups by categorising them
according to their attitudes, personality types, or motivations
-​ Entertainment: Material that grabs the audience’s attention and leaves agreeable
feelings, as opposed to challenging their views of themselves and the world
-​ Even though it may not make me feel as I thought, it was the creator’s intention
to make you feel the same/better
-​ Hybridity: The process of mixing genres within a culture and across cultures
-​ Hybrid genres: A term used by some academic writers to describe mixed genres
-​ Hard news: A news story marked by timeliness, unusualness, conflict, and closeness
-​ Objectivity: Presenting a fair, balanced, and impartial representation of the events that
took place by recounting a news event based on the facts and without interpretation, so
that anyone else who witnessed the event would agree with the journalist’s recounting of
it; the way in which the news ought to be researched, organised, and presented
-​ Talent guild: A union formed by people who work in similar crafts to help negotiate rules
with major production firms in their industries regarding the ways in which freelance
creatives will be treated and paid
-​ Hollywood strikes (Around 2022 or 2023)
-​ Vertical integration: An organisation’s control over a media product from production
through distribution to exhibition
-​ Venture capitalists: Individuals or companies that invest in startups or nonpublic firms in
the hope that the firms’ value will increase over time
-​ Initial Public Offering (IPO): The offering for sale to the general public of a predetermined
number of shares of company stock that were previously owned by a limited number of
individuals, and the listing of the company’s shares on the stock exchange
-​ Retransmission fee: Amount a cable system or satellite firm pays to a broadcaster for the
right to pick the broadcaster’s signal off the air and send it to cable or satellite
subscribers.

Ch. 6: The Internet Industry

-​ Packets: Segments of messages that contain digital instructions that allow them to
reassemble properly at the same time at the destination
 -​ User-generated content: Creative products, such as videos and music, generated by
people on websites and apps
-​ Net Neutrality: Proposition that ISPs should treat all traffic on the internet equally
-​ Web crawlers: Programs used by search engines that search the internet to retrieve and
catalog the content of websites
-​ Algorithms: A process or set of rules to be followed in calculations or other
problem-solving operations, especially by a computer.
-​ Natural search results: Websites that come up based on a search engine’s algorithm
without any influence from advertisers
-​ Social search: A search that is carried out to find what people in a person’s social circle
say about an item
-​ E.g., When you search a topic on TikTok because you want someone talking
about it, and not specifically just the information about the topic itself
-​ Keyword advertising: When software uses the words in the search box to send the
person ads for products that advertisers consider related to the topic
-​ Contextual advertising: When software determines what a person is reading and sends
the person ads for products that advertisers consider related to the topic
-​ Cookie: Information that a website puts on your computer’s hard drive so that it can
remember something about you at a later time; more technically, it is information for
future use that is stored by the server on the client side of a client/server communication.
-​ Ad networks: A collection of many websites that a company knits together in order to sell
ads on them
-​ Ad exchanges: Electronic auctions in which various publishers and ad networks offer
advertisers the ability to reach specific types of people, often at exactly the moment
those people are entering certain sites
-​ Personally identifiable information (PII): The name, postal address, or any other
information that allows tracking down the specific person who owns a device
-​ General Data Protection Regulation (the GDPR): A European Union law with large fines
as penalties that requires firms that use people’s data to clearly disclose what they do
and, under many circumstances, to get their permission before the firms are allowed to
collect the data
-​ Opt-in approach: The view that marketers should not be permitted to collect information
about a person unless the person explicitly indicates that it is all right for them to do so
-​ Opt-out approach: The view that marketers should be permitted to collect personal
information from consumers as long as they inform people of what they are doing and
give them the opportunity to refuse

Ch. 4: Financing and Shaping the Media

-​ Advertising: The activity of explicitly paying for media space or time in order to direct
favourable attention to certain goods or services
-​ Advertising agencies: Companies that specialise in the creation of ads for placement in
media that accept payment for exhibiting those ads
-​ Agency holding companies: Firms that own full-service advertising agencies, speciality
agencies, direct-marketing firms, research companies, and even public relations
agencies
-​ Account executive: A person who moves information between the advertiser and the
agency and makes sure that all production, distribution, and exhibition activities take
place as planned
-​ Marketing segmentation: Dividing society into different categories of consumers
-​ Branding: Creating a specific image of a product that makes it stand out in the
marketplace
-​ Media planners: Agency personnel who make decisions about where to place
advertisements
-​ Attribution challenges: Finding out which one or more of the media on which they
advertised has been the most effective one for persuading people to purchase their
products
-​ Syndicated research: Market research conducted by an independent market research
firm, rather than for a specific client, and then sold to multiple clients in the form of
reports
-​ Media plan: The list of media outlets in which companies advertise their products
-​ Cost per thousand (CPM): The basic measurement of advertising efficiency in all media;
it is used by advertisers to evaluate how much space they will buy in a given medium
and what price they will pay
-​ Programmatic advertising: The use of software to buy advertising on digital media as
opposed to human negotiations and purchases
-​ Public relations (PR): Information, activities, and policies by which corporations and
other organisations seek to create attitudes favourable to themselves and their work, and
to counter adverse attitudes
-​ Media relations: All dealings with reporters and other members of media organisations
who might tell a story about a client
-​ Press release: A short essay that is written in the form of an objective news story
-​ Publicity outlet: A media vehicle (e.g., a particular magazine, a specific TV interview
program, or a particular radio talk show) that has in the past been open to input from
public relations practitioners
-​ Information subsidies: The time and money that PR people provide media practitioners
that helps the latter get their work done
-​ Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC) or Marketing Communications: A blending
of historically different ways to communicate to an organisation’s various audiences and
markets
-​ Branded entertainment: The act of linking the firm or product’s name (and personality)
with an activity that the target audience enjoys
-​ Event marketing: Creating compelling circumstances that command attention in ways
that are relevant to the product or firm. These activities typically take place at sports and
entertainment venues by way of mobile trailers or road shows that publicise products
and on college campuses, in malls, and in bars
 -​ Event sponsorship: A situation in which companies pay money to be associated with
particular activities that their target audiences enjoy or value. Examples include sports,
concerts, and charities
-​ Barter: A process by which products used in movies and TV shows are provided by the
manufacturer to the producers for free in exchange for publicity
-​ Product integration: The act of building plot lines or discussions for talk shows and reality
TV around specific brands
-​ Direct marketing: Marketing that uses media vehicles created by the marketer (phone
messages, email, postal mailings) to send persuasive messages asking that the
consumers who receive them respond to the marketer
-​ Database marketing: The practice of constructing computerized lists of customers and
potential customers that can be used to determine what those people might purchase in
the future. The marketer then contacts the people on these lists with advertising or PR
messages
-​ Relationship marketing: A firm’s process of maintaining long-term contact with its
customers
-​ Paid media: Situations when platforms ask companies for a fee in order to place their
messages in owned media
-​ Owned media: Platforms that companies themselves own in order to present their
messages in favour of a product or service
-​ Earned media: Situations when platforms present a company’s messages without
directly charging it because they feel the company’s message is interesting or useful to
the platforms’ audiences
-​ Commercialism: A situation in which the buying and selling of goods and services is a
highly promoted value
-​ Hidden curriculum: A body of knowledge that people unconsciously absorb when
consuming ads
-​ Tailoring: The capacity to aim media content and ads to particular individuals
-​ Selectability: The ability to reach an individual with entertainment, news, information, and
advertising based on knowledge of the individual’s background, interests, and habits
-​ Accountability to advertisers: The ability to trace an individual’s response to a particular
ad

Ch. 8: The News Industry

-​ Adversarial press: A press that has the ability to argue with the government
-​ Shoppers: Free, nondaily newspapers, typically aimed at people in particular
neighbourhoods who might shop at local merchants and designed primarily to deliver
coupons and advertisements, though they may also carry some news or feature content.
-​ Pass-along rate: The amount of sharing between people of a newspaper copy
-​ Freestanding Inserts (FSIs): Preprinted sheets that advertise particular products,
services, or retailers
-​ Retail advertising: Advertising that is carried out by establishments located in the same
geographic area as the newspaper in which the ad is placed.
 -​ Classified ad: Short announcement for a product or service that is typically grouped with
announcements for other products or services of the same kind
-​ National ad: Advertisements placed by large national and multinational firms that do
business in a newspaper’s geographical area
-​ Advertising–Editorial Ratio: Set by the publisher, this ratio determines the balance
between the amount of space available for advertisements and the amount of space
available for editorial matter in one issue of a newspaper
-​ News hole: The number of pages left over and available for editorial matter (based on
the number of pages needed for advertisements)
-​ Beat: A specific, long-term assignment that covers a single topic area
-​ Wire services: Organisations that, for a fee, supply newspapers with a continual stream
of hard news and feature stories about international, national, and even state topics via
high-speed telephone, cable, and/or internet connections
-​ Syndicates: Companies that sell soft news, editorial matter, cartoons, and photographs
to newspapers for use
-​ Copy editors: The individuals who edit stories written by reporters; they edit for length,
accuracy, style, and grammar and write headlines to accompany the stories
-​ Total Market Coverage (TMC): Reaching nearly all households in a newspaper’s market
area
-​ Direct mail firms: Advertising firms that mail advertisements directly to consumers’
homes
-​ Marriage mail outfits: Advertising firms that specialise in delivering circular
advertisements that might otherwise be inserted as FSIs in newspapers; they produce
sheets and brochures from several advertisers that are bundled together
-​ Podcasts: Audio recordings that can be downloaded to MP3 players

Ch. 9: The Magazine Industry

-​ Controlled circulation magazine: A magazine whose production and mailing are
supported not by charging readers, but (typically) through advertising revenues; the
publisher, rather than the reader, decides who gets the magazine
-​ Custom magazine: A controlled circulation magazine that is typically created for a
company to reach out to a specific audience that the company wants to impress
-​ Paid circulation magazines: A magazine that supports its production and mailing by
charging readers money, either for a subscription or for a single copy.
-​ Media kits: Databases compiled by magazines that tell potential advertisers attractive
key facts about their readers
-​ Magazine publisher: The chief executive of a magazine, who is in charge of its financial
health
-​ Controlled Circulation Magazine: A magazine whose production and mailing are
supported not by charging readers, but (typically) through advertising revenues; the
publisher, rather than the reader, decides who gets the magazine
-​ Custom Magazine: A controlled circulation magazine that is typically created for a
company with the goal of reaching out to a specific audience that the company wants to
impress
 -​ Paid Circulation Magazines: A magazine that supports its production and mailing by
charging readers money, either for a subscription or for a single copy
-​ Media kits: Databases compiled by magazines that tell potential advertisers attractive
key facts about their readers
-​ Upscale readers: Upper-middle-class or upper-class people with substantial disposable
income (money beyond the amount needed for basic expenses)

Ch 7: The Book Industry

-​ Professional books: Books that help people who are working keep up-to-date in their
areas, as well as rise to the next level of knowledge
-​ Consumer books: Books that are aimed at the general public
-​ Digital basal materials: Basic teaching tools for children in early grades, but they are
electronic rather than on paper
-​ Imprint: A name or brand that the publisher places on the bottom of a book’s spine as
well as on the main title page. It signifies a publishing firm or one of its divisions.
-​ Composition: The work involved in inserting into a manuscript the codes and
conventions that tell the pagemaking program or the printing press how the material
should look on the page
-​ Acquisitions editor: A person who recruits and signs new authors and titles for the
company’s list of books
-​ Literary agent: A person who, on behalf of a client, markets the client’s manuscripts to
editors, publishers, and other buyers, based on knowledge of the target market and the
specific content of the manuscript
-​ Presold titles: A book that publishers expect will sell well to specific audiences because it
ties into material that is already popular with those audiences across other media

Ch. 10: The Recording Industry

-​ Streaming audio: The flow of sounds (usually music) to listeners in such a way that the
sounds are meant to disappear after they are heard
-​ Patent trust: A company owned by a number of firms that is formed to share their patents
in order to prevent other firms from entering their industry unless the trust allows them to
use the patents
-​ Internet radio: Pre-chosen music streams based around certain genres—for example,
hip-hop or classical—provided free to listeners and paid for by commercial
advertisements, much like a radio station
-​ Label: A division of a recording firm that releases a certain type of music and reflects a
certain personality
-​ A&R (artist and repertoire): Recording firm executives who screen new acts for a firm
and determine whether to sign those acts
-​ Royalty: The share of money paid to a songwriter or music composer out of the money
that the production firm receives from the sale or exhibition of a work
 -​ Performance royalties: Money paid to composers, their publishers, and their record
labels when their material is used (live or recorded) in front of audiences via stage acts,
jukeboxes, radio, television, or online radio
-​ Mechanical royalties: Money collected as a result of the sale of physical media (e.g.,
CDs) and the sale or download of digital recordings, including albums, individual tracks,
and ringtones
-​ Payola: An activity in which promotion personnel pay money to radio personnel to
ensure that the latter will devote airtime to artists that the former’s recording companies
represent

Ch. 11: The Radio Industry

-​ Frequency modulation (FM): A means of radio broadcasting, utilising the band between
88 and 108 megahertz; FM signals are marked by high levels of clarity but rarely travel
more than eighty miles from the site of their transmission
-​ Amplitude modulation (AM): A means of radio broadcasting, utilising the band between
540 and 1,700 megahertz; AM signals are prone to frequent static interference, but their
high-powered signals allow them to travel great distances, especially at night
-​ Commercial stations: Radio stations that support themselves financially by selling time
on their airwaves to advertisers
-​ Noncommercial stations: Radio stations that do not receive financial support from
advertisers; normally state or student-owned.
-​ Because the FCC does not permit these stations to sell products directly, the
stations support themselves through donations from listeners, private
foundations, and corporations—the latter in return for mentioning the firm or its
products in announcements at the beginning and end of their programs. These
announcements, called billboards, often sound suspiciously like the commercials
these stations aren’t allowed by law to run. National Public Radio is a network
that uses billboards.
-​ Billboards: The mention of a sponsor’s name or products at the start or end of an aired
program, acknowledged in return for money
-​ Radio format: The personality of a station, designed to attract a particular audience
segment
-​ Format consultant: Individuals hired by a radio station to analyze the competition and
select a format that will attract the most lucrative audience niche possible
-​ Narrow casting: Going after specific slices of the radio audience that are especially
attractive to advertisers
-​ Listening patterns: The habits that describe people’s use of radio
-​ Dead air: When the radio transmits nothing because they have failed to transmit sound.
-​ On-air talent: Term referring to radio workers whose voices and personalities are
broadcast over the radio’s airwaves
-​ Burn music test: Surveying people to determine which songs still draw interest and which
have lost their popularity (or “burned out”)
-​ Fringe listeners: Listeners who fall within the target audience but rarely listen to a
particular station
 -​ Core audience: Listeners who spend a lot of time listening to a radio station
-​ Format clock (format wheel): A circular chart that divides one hour of a radio station’s
format into different timed program elements
-​ Drive time: Early weekday mornings and late afternoons—when people are driving to
and from work—when radio stations expect to capture their largest audience
-​ Network: A company that distributes programs simultaneously to radio stations that
agree to carry a substantial amount of its material on an ongoing basis; typically, a
network provides a regular schedule of programming material to its affiliate stations for
broadcast
-​ Syndicator: A company that licenses programming to radio stations on a
market-by-market basis
-​ Format networks: Programming firms that provide subscribing radio stations with all the
programming they need to fill their airwaves twenty-four hours a day, seven days a
week; often the station needs only to insert local commercial spots into the programming
-​ Local advertising: Advertising money that comes from companies within listening range
of the radio station
-​ National spot advertising: Form of advertising in which airtime is purchased from a local
radio station by national advertisers or their representatives
-​ Network advertising: Form of radio advertising in which national advertisers or their
representatives purchase airtime not from local radio stations but from the network that
serves the radio station
-​ Portable People Meter (PPM): Nielsen’s electronic device for tracking radio listening both
at home and on the street
-​ Streaming audio measurement: rings together data it collects from people’s apps or web
players (along with third-party information about those people) with data it gets from its
diaries and PPMs
-​ Rating point: One rating point equals 1 per cent of the population in a market
-​ Radio promotion: A radio contest or event in which prizes are given out
-​ Audio streaming: Practice in which an audio file is delivered to a computer-like device
from a website so that it can be heard while it is coming into the device, but cannot be
saved or stored
-​ HD (hybrid digital/analogue) radio: A system in which digital signals of AM and FM
stations are sent along with the traditional analogue station sounds on the same
frequencies allocated to the analogue stations
-​ Promotion: The process of scheduling publicity appearances for a recording artist, with
the goal of generating excitement about the artist and thereby sales of his or her album
-​ Payola: An activity in which promotion personnel pay money to radio personnel to
ensure that the latter will devote airtime to artists that the former’s recording companies
represent

Ch. 12: The Movie Industry

-​ Star system: An operation designed to find and cultivate actors under long-term
contracts, with the intention of developing those actors into famous “stars” who would
enhance the profitability of the studio’s films
-​ A films: Expensively made productions featuring glamorous, highly paid stars
-​ B films: Lower-budget films that were made quickly
-​ Theatrical films: Films created to be shown first in traditional movie theaters
-​ They can go to streaming/television/DvD after their theatre run
-​ Box office receipts: The sum of money taken in for admission at movie theatres around
the country
-​ Blockbusters: Films that bring in more than $200 million at the box office
-​ Multiplex: A modern, air-conditioned building that houses between eight and fifteen
screens and has the capacity to exhibit a number of different films at the same time
-​ Megaplex: A modern, air-conditioned building that houses sixteen or more screens and
has the capacity to exhibit a number of different films at the same time
-​ The majors: The five most powerful companies in Hollywood because of their distribution
power film production firms companies involved in coming up with story ideas, finding
scriptwriters, hiring the personnel needed to make the movie, and making sure the work
is carried out on time and on budget
-​ Film distribution firms: Companies responsible for finding theatres in which to show the
movies around the world and for promoting the films to the public
-​ Independent producers: Production firms that are not owned by a distributor
-​ Scriptwriters: Individuals who create plays for the movies, with scenes and dialogue.
-​ Talent agents: Individuals who represent various creative personnel (e.g., actors,
directors, authors, and screenwriters) and aim to link them with production firms in
exchange for a percentage of the creators’ revenues from the finished product pitch the
initial presentation of a movie idea to a producer
-​ Treatment: Detailed outline of an initial pitch to executives of a production or distribution
firm; if the executives approve of the treatment, they will probably order a script to be
written
-​ On spec: Writing a script for a film without a contract to do so, with the hope that when
the script is passed along to various production firms by the scriptwriter’s agent, it will be
bid for and purchased
-​ Line producer: The individual who makes sure the equipment and personnel are there
when they are needed completion bond companies insurance companies that, for a
large fee, pay any costs that exceed an agreed-upon amount for a film
-​ Completion bond companies: Insurance companies that, for a large fee, pay any costs
that exceed an agreed-upon amount for a film
-​ Title testing: Conducting interviews with filmgoers in shopping malls and other public
places to determine the most alluring name for an upcoming picture
-​ Previewing: A type of concept testing that takes place after a film is completed but before
it is formally released
-​ Rough cut: A preliminary version of a movie
-​ Tracking studies: Research on the public’s awareness of and interest in a film, beginning
two weeks before the film’s release and continuing through the film’s first month of
release
-​ Exhibition license: An agreement between a distributor and an exhibition firm that
specifies the date on which the distributor will make the film available to the exhibition
 firm’s theatres, the number of weeks the theatres agree to run the film, and when and
where competing theatres can show the same film; it also sets the financial
arrangements between the distributor and the exhibition firm
-​ Percentage-above-the-nut approach: An agreement drawn between a distributor and an
exhibition firm in which the executives of the exhibition firm and the distribution firm
agree on the costs of operating each theatre (electricity, salaries, rent, maintenance, and
the like)—a break-even point called the nut; then, film by film, the distributor and the
exhibition firm negotiate what percentage of revenues “above the nut” the exhibition firm
will pay to the distribution firm
-​ “Discount” theatres, which may show movies a few months after they were first
released, typically pay a substantially lower percentage above the nut to the
distributor
-​ Digital cinema package (DCP): A hard drive that’s encrypted and shipped to a theater
that has the password
-​ Satellite cinema package (SCP): The theatre downloads the movie from a satellite and
then projects it onto a screen
-​ Sell-through outlets: Stores in which consumers buy the videos rather than just renting
them
-​ Rental outlets: Companies that purchase releases from movie distributors and then rent
them to individual customers on a pay-per-day basis
-​ Data locker: A website that rents secure password-protected areas to store files
-​ Art films: Movies created on small budgets that often do not fit into Hollywood
stereotypes and standard genres

Ch. 13: The Television Industry

-​ Television broadcasting: Scanning a visual image and transmitting it, generally with
accompanying sound, in the form of electromagnetic waves that, when received, can be
reconverted into visual images
-​ Broadcast live: Broadcast as it was actually being performed, rather than being taped,
filmed, or otherwise recorded
-​ Golden age of television: The period of time from approximately 1949 to 1960, marked
by the proliferation of original and classic dramas produced for live television
-​ Syndication: The licensing of mass media material to outlets on a market-by-market
basis
-​ Television program ratings: Audits of people’s viewing behaviours that gauge which
shows households are viewing and how many are viewing them; they help network
executives decide which shows should stay, which should be dropped from the lineup,
and how much advertisers should pay to hawk their products during breaks in the
program
-​ Commercial stations: Broadcast television stations that support themselves financially by
selling time on their airwaves to advertisers
-​ Noncommercial stations: Broadcast television stations that do not receive financial
support from advertisers, but rather support themselves through donations from listeners
 and private foundations and from commercial firms in return for mentioning the firm or its
products in announcements at the beginning and end of programs airing on the station
-​ Underwriting: When a company pays to sponsor a program on a noncommercial station
-​ Television network: An organisation that distributes television programs, typically by
satellite and microwave relay, to all its affiliated stations, or stations that agree to carry a
substantial amount of the network’s material on an ongoing basis, so that the programs
can be broadcast by all the stations at the same time
-​ Big Four commercial networks: The four largest television networks: ABC, CBS, Fox,
and NBC
-​ O&O: Stations owned by ABC, CBS, Fox, and NBC
-​ Network affiliates: Local broadcast television stations that are not owned by broadcast
networks and yet transmit network signals and programs on a daily basis; in return, the
network promises to compensate the affiliate with a portion of the revenues received
from advertisers that have bought time on the network
-​ Program feed: The succession of shows sent from a network to its network affiliates
-​ Station groups: Collections of broadcast television stations owned by a single company
-​ Independent broadcast station: A station not affiliated with one of the Big Four networks
-​ Retransmission fees: The money television networks and local stations charge cable and
satellite firms for the right to carry their material
-​ Multichannel subscription Video Programming Distributors (MVPDs): An organisation
that delivers video programming services, usually for a subscription fee
-​ Cable television: Television service provided to subscribers by signals sent through a
wire (usually a coaxial cable, but increasingly via fibre-optic lines)
-​ Cable television system: The cable television retailer that physically installs the cable
and markets the program service to consumers in a particular geographic area
-​ Multiple System Owner (MSO): A cable television firm that owns two or more cable
television systems
-​ Subscription networks: Nonbroadcast program channels for which people pay a monthly
subscription fee to receive them via cable or satellite
-​ Telcos: Telephone companies that offer television and internet services
-​ Direct Broadcast Satellite (DBS) technology: Technology that allows a household to
receive hundreds of channels from signals that are delivered digitally from satellites
operating in orbit to a small dish installed on the side of a dwelling; a set-top box
decodes digital signals so that they appear on the TV set
-​ Lineup: The menu of channels that a cable television system offers potential subscribers
-​ License fees: The costs that particular networks charge exhibitors for carrying the
networks’ lineups in the exhibitors’ cable or satellite systems
-​ Tiering: The strategy by which different levels of television programming are priced
differently
-​ Pay-Per-View (PPV): A transaction in which a cable provider, satellite company, or telco
charges the customer for viewing an individual program, such as a boxing event, a live
broadcast of a concert, or a newly released motion picture
-​ Video On Demand (VOD): A television viewing technology whereby a customer uses the
remote control to navigate to a menu of programs and then clicks on the program he or
 she wants to watch; unlike pay-per-view, in which the customer has to wait for the show
to appear at a certain time, the program immediately appears for viewing
-​ High-definition television (HDTV): A television display technology that provides picture
quality similar to that of 35mm movies with sound quality similar to that of today’s
compact discs. Some television stations have begun transmitting HDTV broadcasts to
users on a limited number of channels, generally using digital rather than analog signal
transmission
-​ Multichannel broadcasting (channel multiplexing): Sending multiple signals or streams of
information on a carrier at the same time in the form of a single complex signal and then
recovering the separate signals at the receiving end
-​ So, for example, rather than just broadcasting channel 6, a network could
broadcast on channels 6a (the main, HD, channel), 6b, 6c, and 6d
-​ vMVPDs: Virtual program distributors; they offer a smaller number of linear channels
than the traditional MVPDs for a substantially lower price
-​ Slim bundles: Relatively small collection of channels offered by vMPVDs
-​ Cutting the cord: When people cancel their cable, telco, or satellite TV subscriptions
-​ Cord shavers: People who have kept their cable, telco, and satellite TV subscriptions but
have reduced the tiers they receive from MVPDs to save costs
-​ Ratings: Audits of people’s television viewing behavior that help determine where much
of the money for programming and advertising should go
-​ People meter: A small box installed by Nielsen on television sets in about 20,000 homes
that it has chosen as a representative sample of the US population. The meter holds a
preassigned code for every individual in the home, including visitors. Nielsen asks each
viewer to enter his or her code at the start and end of a TV viewing session. Information
from each viewing session is transmitted to Nielsen’s computers through television lines.
and is the basis for the firm’s conclusions about national viewing habits
-​ Sweeps: The survey of TV viewing habits in markets across the United States, as
performed by Nielsen four times per year—during the months of February, May, August,
and November; competition among TV programmers is especially keen during these
periods
-​ Household ratings: Ratings that represent the number of households in which the
channel was turned on, compared with the number of households in the channel’s
universe (the local area, or the number of people who receive the cable network)
-​ People ratings: Particular demographic categories of individuals within each
household—for example, those aged 18 to 49 years or those who are female
-​ Household share: The number of households in which a particular channel was turned
on compared with the number of TV-owning households in the area where the channel
could be viewed
-​ Reach: The percentage of the entire target audience to which a media outlet will
circulate
-​ National rating points: A measure of the percentage of TV sets in the United States that
are tuned to a specific show; in 2001 each national rating point represented just over 1
million US homes with TVs
-​ Average commercial minute: Nielsen’s reporting standard for determining ratings and
household viewing during commercials; this information gives advertisers measurements
not just for each program taken as a whole but also for the commercials that run during
the programs
-​ C3 rating: Nielsen technique of measuring the average commercial minute of a program
by including in the ratings people who recorded commercials on DVRs and viewed them
within a three-day period
-​ C7 rating: Nielsen technique of measuring the average commercial minute of a program
by including in the ratings people who recorded commercials on DVRs and viewed them
within a seven-day period
-​ Day parts: Segments of the day as defined by programmers and marketers prime time
the hours from 8 to 11 p.m. during which many networks put on their most expensive
programs and charge advertisers the most money for commercial time
-​ Audience flow: The movement of audience members from one program to another
-​ Lead-in: A program that comes before, and therefore leads into, another program,
sampling, trying out a new program by watching it for the first time
-​ Lead-out: The program that follows the program after the lead-in
-​ Hammock: The strategic placement of a program between two other programs;
positioning a new series between two well-established shows that appeal to the same
target audience often gives the right viewers an opportunity to sample the new series
-​ Time slot: A particular position in the schedule
-​ Counterprogramming: scheduling a program that aims to attract a target audience
different from those of other shows in the same time slot; often done to avoid competing
directly with a popular series
-​ Pitch: Brief summary of a program idea
-​ Treatment: A multipage elaboration of a television series producer’s initial pitch to
network programming executives; the document describes the proposed show’s setup
and the way in which it relates to previous popular series
-​ Concept testing: Research commissioned by network executives in order to determine
whether the format of a proposed series appeals to members of the series’ target
audience; this often involves reading a one-paragraph description of series formats to
people who fit the profile of likely viewers
-​ Pilot: A single episode that is used to test the viability of a series
-​ Preview theaters: Venues to which members of a target audience are invited to engage
in concept testing or to evaluate newly completed series pilots
-​ License: The contract between a production company and network executives that
grants the network permission to air each episode a certain number of times; usually
thirteen episodes of a series are ordered
-​ Stripping: Five-day-a-week placement of a television show; programmers believe that, in
certain day parts, placing the same show in the same time slot each weekday lends a
predictability to the schedule that target audiences appreciate
-​ Off-network syndication: A situation in which a distributor takes a program that has
already been shown on network television and rents episodes of that program to TV
stations for local airing
 -​ Out-of-home locations (or captive audience locations): Places such as airline waiting
areas and store checkout lines where people congregate and are likely pay attention to
TV clips and commercials
-​ Stream: The act of sending digital materials so they can be heard or viewed as they are
sent, without having to be saved first
-​ Social television: A person’s use of one screen for viewing a program while he or she
uses another screen for discussing it with others

Ch. 14: The Video Game Industry

-​ Pinball machine: Coin-operated game in which a player scores points by causing metal
balls to move in certain directions (often using flippers) inside a glass-covered case
-​ Entertainment arcades: Commercial locations featuring coin-operated machines such as
pinball machines, fortune tellers, and shooting games
-​ Bulletin boards: Software that allows users to exchange messages with other users, read
news and public articles, and perform other activities such as play games
-​ Multiuser dungeons (MUDs): Early text-based online fantasy role-playing games
-​ Massively multiplayer online roleplaying games (MMORPGs): Video games in which a
large number of players—as many as hundreds of thousands—interact with one another
in virtual worlds
-​ Casual gamers: Women and men who are older than the hard-core types and/ or who
like to play less intense (though not necessarily less difficult) games than the hardcore
types; these games include puzzle, card, board, and word games
-​ Virtual Reality (VR): The creation of a computer-generated 3D environment that
surrounds a user and responds to an individual’s actions in a natural way, usually
through immersive head-mounted displays.
-​ Augmented Reality: The real-time use of information in the form of text, graphics, audio,
and other virtual enhancements integrated with real-world objects and presented using a
head-mounted-type display or projected graphics overlays
-​ Third-party publishers: Companies that are unaffiliated with hardware companies and
that typically create games that work on a variety of systems
-​ Edutainment: Teaching-oriented video games that are designed to have educational
outcomes for specific groups of learners
-​ Dynamic in-game advertising: The process of sending ads into video games while
individuals are playing, and of changing the ads and offering different sponsored
downloads depending on the players’ game settings and level
-​ Transactional Databases: Databases that store and sort large quantities of data that
reflect transactions—such as logs of phone calls, emails, mailings, or purchases