Parents, television and cultural change

We develop a model of cultural transmission where television plays a role in socialisation. We study the coverage of different cultural traits by a profit-maximising TV industry and the resulting cultural dynamics. A monopolist covers both traits, but grants more coverage to the most profitable group. In a competitive TV industry each channel specialises on one trait. This might lead to cultural extinction, but only for sufficiently large majorities. Cultural extinction is more likely in a competitive than in a monopolistic TV industry. Overall our model predicts that cultural extinction can only occur under very special circumstances. © 2013 Royal Economic Society.Hauk acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness, through the Severo Ochoa Programme for Centres of Excellence in R&D (SEV-2011-0075) and through CICYT project number ECO2012-37065 and from the government of CataloniaPeer Reviewe