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TV’s New Economics

Moderator: Henry Jenkins
David F. Poltrack Jorge Schement: March 8, 2006; Running Time: 2:04:40

About the Lecture

About the Lecture

From his aerie at CBS, David Poltrack tracks patterns in Americans’ viewing habits. A decade ago, he says, broadcasters were bracing for the worst as digital television threatened to supplant ordinary commercial TV. He’s happy to report, after much research, no earth-shattering change, yet. Indeed, there’s much to gladden this programmer’s heart. Digital video recorders (DVRs), which have only managed to penetrate around 8% of American homes, have actually created a small increase in the total numbers viewing the top primetime broadcast shows like CSI, Desperate Housewives and Las Vegas, ultimately “enhancing networks and increasing the size of their respective audiences.” Poltrack sees DVRs gradually giving way to video on demand, where, his research implies, people will pay to see the same top network shows. He predicts that new portable viewing devices such as the video iPod, along with full motion video cell phones, will become a preferred method for watching TV. His network intends to take full advantage of these distribution options, placing content on the Internet as well.

Jorge Schement offers ample evidence that most homes in America no longer resemble (if they ever did) the mythic “Father Knows Best” household. He offers glimpses of “glacial population movements transforming cities, who lives where, transforming the economy, popular culture and language.” Within 10 years, the entire state of New York will have a minority white population. More surprisingly, Iowa, Michigan and Kentucky are headed that way as well.

How do Americans of all stripes consume new technologies? Those that require people to make a purchase every month “have a slower diffusion than things for which people save up money and make a purchase.” During the Depression, he notes, when “25% of American households have no one working, they’re buying radios hand over fist.” Television was a similar luxury in the 1950s, but was irresistible to the baby boomer generation who “could no longer afford to go out to movies or out dancing two to three times per week.” The 1980s was “a turning-point decade for making the American home a node on the network,” with the arrival of video games, cable, home satellite receivers, modems, answering machines and PCs. With the video game industry overtaking the movie industry in profits, and the penetration of the Internet and of portable entertainment, the American home looks like a “multiplex theater with arcades,” says Schement.

Lecture Details

Location: Bartos Theater

About the Speakers

Moderator: Henry Jenkins

Peter de Florez Professor of Humanities
Director of Comparative Media Studies Program

Henry Jenkins' books include Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide and Fans, Bloggers and Gamers: Exploring Participatory Culture. His previous books include "What Made Pistachio Nuts": Early Sound Comedy and the Vaudeville Aesthetic; Classical Hollywood Comedy; and Textual Poachers: Television Fans and Participatory Culture. Jenkins has published articles on a diverse range of topics relating to film, television and popular culture. His most recent essays include work on Star Trek, WWF Wrestling, Nintendo Games, and Dr. Seuss.

Jenkins has a Ph.D. in Communication Arts from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.A. in Communication Studies from the University of Iowa.

David F. Poltrack

Executive Vice President, Research and Planning, CBS Television

David F. Poltrack oversees all television research activities of CBS Television, encompassing audience measurement, market research, program testing and advertising research. He is responsible for the monitoring of the national and international video marketplace. He also designed and currently oversees, Television City at the MGM Grand, Las Vegas, CBS's Research Center providing ongoing consumer feedback concerning all programming of the CBS TV network as well as the other Viacom networks. He is also Adjunct Associate Professor at New York University, where he teaches courses in marketing and media at both the graduate and undergraduate levels in the NYU Stern School of Business and the NYU School of Education and Communication.

Jorge Schement

Distinguished Professor of Communications; Professor of Information Sciences and Technologies and Co-Director of the Institute for Information Policy, College of Communications, The Pennsylvania State University

A Latino from South Texas, Jorge Reina Schement maintains a special interest in policy as it relates to ethnic minorities, and is author of the telecommunications policy agenda for the Congressional Hispanic Caucus. He has served on advisory and steering committees for the National Academy of Sciences, the National Research Council, the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Office of Technology Assessment of the U.S. Congress, the United States Commission on Civil Rights, and the Centers for Disease Control.

Schement's books include: Global Networks(1999), Tendencies and Tensions of the Information Age(1995),and Toward an Information Bill of Rights and Responsibilities(1995). Schement received his Master's degree from the University of Illinois, and his Ph.D. from Stanford University.