Why Viewers Contribute in Live Feed Broadcast

Live feed broadcast, as a new media, enables viewers to interact with broadcasters or other viewers during live video and co-create video with others. Facilitated by synchrony and mobility, the live feed broadcast is now available to anyone having a smart phone consequently leading to increased competition among broadcaster for viewers. The presence of viewers in one’s live feed brings reputation as well as financial benefits to the broadcasters. Hence, the ease of broadcasting would increase competition and hence difficulty in viewer retention. Therefore, this study aims to investigate viewers’ intention to actively participate in a live feed broadcast using a combination of socio-technical perspective and commitment-trust theory. The results reveal that social and technical features influence affective commitment and identification trust, which in turn affects the viewer co-creation behavior. The results will be useful for live feed broadcasters as well as platform providers. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed

Live Sports Virtual Reality Broadcasts: Copyright and Other Protections

As virtual reality rapidly progresses, broadcasts are able to increasingly mimic the experience of actually attending a game. As the technology advances and the viewer can freely move about the game and virtual reality can simulate the in-stadium attendance, the virtual reality broadcast nears the point where the broadcast is indistinguishable from the underlying game. Thus, novel copyright protection issues arise regarding the ability to protect the experience through copyright. Although normal broadcasts may be copyrighted, virtual reality broadcasts of live sports could lack protection under the Copyright Act because the elements of originality, authorship, and fixation are harder to satisfy for this type of work. If the elements that formerly protected broadcasts through copyright no longer apply, the virtual reality broadcast of the game will lose copyright protection. The virtual reality broadcaster can receive protection for the work in several ways, such as (1) by broadcaster-made modifications to the transmitted broadcast, (2) through misappropriation claims, or (3) by inserting contract terms. These additional steps maintain the ability of virtual reality broadcasters to disseminate works without fear the work will not be protectable by the law

“Why the Anomaly that is Super Bowl Marketing is a Justifiable Investment”

By now, we have well established that the Super Bowl is the holy grail of marketing, the championship for the battle of the brands, and the ultimate showcase of creative prowess which determines bragging rights. This American phenomenon is the exception, because it’s the one time on the calendar where viewers are mesmerized by commercials instead of tuning them out as noise. There are critical strategic objectives which can be satisfied, revolutionizing the brand in the eyes of the consumer and drastically expanding brand awareness. We know the vast benefits that well-executed marketing schemes can have for companies, especially during the Super Bowl, which initiate significant implications. The proof of effectiveness is obvious when observing statistics for the 2018 Super Bowl: • An average viewership of 103.4 million, escalating to 112.3 million at the end of the game. (Nielsen 2018) • 68% of homes with functioning T.V’s were tuned into the Super Bowl broadcast. (Nielsen 2018) • 170.7 million social media interactions across Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. (Nielsen 2018) • Digital viewership of 2.02 million viewers a minute, a streaming record. (Nielsen 2018) • Price of 30 second advertisement maximized at $5.2 million (American Marketing Association) • Aggregate Super Bowl ad spending over 52 year history (1967-2018):$6.9 billion adjusted for inflation. (AdAge 2018) Granted, there are some viable concerns associated with Super Bowl advertising. Because of immense scrutiny, marketers need to be conscious of the impact repercussions of attempting to make a statement which backfires can have. Attending to and reconciling public backlash can be difficult and can severely damage brand perception. Negative news surrounding the NFL have also been hot topics of debate recently. However, while some of these issues may erode some viewership in the short run, as 2018 statistics minimally decreased from 2017, the future trajectory of the Super Bowl is not truly threatened. Actually, the New York Times (Maheshwari, 2018) explains how “In an era of cord-cutting and ad-skipping, the Super Bowl is a sweet salve for the nation’s marketers.” Because of the evolution of on-demand, marketers are forced to deliberate if T.V. advertisements are worth it, with one exception: live sports. The Atlantic (Thompson, 2013) portrays this concept perfectly, stating “But in a time-delayed video world, the biggest games still drive dependable live audiences, making sports rights the most valuable resource in the whole TV ecosystem.” The consequence of this reality: almost no one records on-demand sports to skip the commercials because we can’t avoid the social media buzz which chronicles how games develop. Because the love for sports will never expire, the Super Bowl will never become obsolete for marketers. At the end of the day, the Super Bowl is the marketing anomaly that has solidified its stranglehold as the pinnacle of advertising. The big game is so rooted into American culture that Super Bowl Sunday has become a holiday for millions across our great nation. As CNN Money (Disis, 2018) explains, “It\u27s simple. The NFL\u27s marquee event is TV\u27s biggest game in town, and nothing else even comes close.” Marketers who need to distinguish their brand as a supreme offering to secure competitive advantage over competitors (ahem, everyone) need to seize the moment. The habitual winners of Super Bowl advertising significantly elevate their status in the hearts and minds of the American people. My declared Super Bowl advertising champion, Anheuser-Busch InBev (responsible for Budweiser and Bud Light), absolutely dominates the American beer market. Super Bowl regulars undoubtedly think of Budweiser’s “Puppy Love” (2014) spot with the legendary Clydesdales or the dramatic “Bud Bowl” (1989-91) series when they crack a cold brew. My theory: it’s no mistake that the best in the Super Bowl advertising realm is also the “King of Beers” because of their supreme strategy and execution on the marketing gridiron’s biggest stage

Two Screen Viewing and Social Relationships. Exploring the invisible backchannel of TV viewing

Use of social networks to create a real-time backchannel of\ud communication among viewers of television programs has been documented, and has been termed “two-screen viewing,” with one screen devoted to the program being watched, and a second screen (usually a laptop, tablet, or cell/mobile\ud phone) devoted to maintaining the backchannel. Prior research has examined twoscreen viewing through content analysis of social media posts. However, little has been done to explore the way in which two screen viewing qualitatively changes the viewing experience, or to understand how this behavior contributes to the construction or maintenance of social relationships. Couch (1992) noted that social interaction require a shared focus, a social objective, and congruent functional identities. The first screen program provides the shared focus. Using online interviews, this small pilot project seeks to discover whether social objectives and congruent functional identities are established through two-screen viewing. That is, the study explores how one might go about determining whether this communication actually contributes to social relationships or serves some other, asocial purpose. The present study is a small pilot project only. Preliminary\ud data suggest that there are two types of two-screen viewing defined by different degrees of visible and invisible online practice

Extending Reach with Technology: Seattle Opera's Multipronged Experiment to Deepen Relationships and Reach New Audiences

This case study describes the Seattle Opera's four-year-long effort to test which kinds of technology channels work well in audience engagement. Its experiments with technology included a simulcast of Madama Butterfly at an 8,300-capacity sports arena, interactive kiosks in the opera house lobby and online videos that took viewers behind the scenes of the opera's signature production of Wagner's Ring cycle. Every season employed at least some winning engagement tools, driven in large part by the company's efforts to gather information before determining what applications to use. Although the majority of the tools were most effective at enhancing the experience of patrons who already had a deep connection with the company, the simulcast, in project's fourth year, also brought in opera newcomers. One important lesson from the work was that effective strategies required the involvement not just of the marketing department, but of the entire organization, including its union representatives

In the Battle for Reality: Social Documentaries in the U.S.

Provides an overview of documentaries that address social justice and democracy issues, and includes case studies of successful strategic uses of social documentaries

Creeping decay: cult soundtracks, residual media, and digital technologies

This paper explores the recent resurgence in the collecting of cult film soundtracks, in particular films stemming from the late 1960s to the early 1980s and often linked to horror and other modes of exploitation cinema. I consider this phenomenon as an important component of cult film fandom, but one which has largely been overlooked in cult cinema research because it is often considered as belonging to popular music, as opposed to film, research. As films can become cultified in many different ways and across different media, I look into how areas of music culture can both be inspired by, as well as influence, aspects of film culture. The paper also addresses the importance of ‘residual’ technologies within cult film/music cultures, noting in particular the preference for vinyl records as well as VHS tapes in certain cult fan communities, and explores the appeal that such ‘old media’ retain within an increasingly digital mediascape

“Please send us your money”: The BBC’s evolving relationship with charitable causes, fundraising and humanitarian appeals

Fundraising for charitable causes has had a key place in the BBC’s schedule since the earliest days of the corporation and the establishment of the weekly radio appeal. As new forms of fundraising through high-profile media events developed in the 1980s, raising unprecedentedly large sums for charity, the BBC had to adjust the way it negotiated with good causes and audiences. These changes coincided with professionalization and rapid growth of the NGO sector, which sought to elicit funds from a wider public using innovative techniques and new ways of reaching out through the media. This article uses internal BBC documents to examine how, against this rapidly changing background, the organization navigated the rules behind broadcasting of appeals. This includes the way that the BBC interacted with the Disasters Emergency Committee that had been established in the 1960s to provide an interface between broadcasters and charities to oversee exceptional fundraising for international causes. In some cases, the BBC faced difficulties in reconciling its duty to educate audiences about charitable causes with the fundraising imperative which relied on TV extravaganzas. In other cases, the BBC confronted the question of whether it was hosting a global fundraising event or simply covering an event organized by others. These kinds of emerging challenges which arose out of new innovations in fundraising via broadcasting produced interesting debates that are still evolving both within the charitable sector and in the way it relates to the media. The BBC’s role within this ecology provides some illuminating insights about the issues connected with raising funds for humanitarian causes