We analyze the complex innovation process that led to the development of automatically written soccer match reports for the Sportschau, a sports magazine produced by German Public Service Medium (PSM) Westdeutscher Rundfunk (WDR). From the perspective of innovative learning culture (ILC), we ask via guideline-based interviews which of its characteristics and conditions could be observed. Findings show that almost all the characteristics of ILC were present, such as the team being allowed by WDR to be experimental and creative in its approach, as were ILC's conditions, such as open communication and shared goals, which were mainly managed by WDR's Innovation Hub.
Binge-watching is a notable phenomenon that is changing the production, distribution, and consumption of television programs. This study conceptualizes binge-watching by comparing and contrasting binge-watching with binge-eating and binge-drinking. Applying the uses and gratifications theory, this study also investigates differences between binge-watchers and nonbinge-watchers, and identifies predictors of binge-watching behaviors including frequency, the amount of time spent binge-watching, and the quantity of binge-watching episodes. A national survey of U.S. adults (N = 663) found significant differences between binge-watchers and nonbinge-watchers in terms of the degree to which they depend on television shows to satisfy various psychological needs. Results also indicate that entertainment, habitual passing of time, and escape motives, as well as age and preference for action/adventure, crime, and mystery genres predict binge-watching frequency.
While U.S. adults increasingly use social media to get news, little is known about how people perceive the credibility of social media as a news distribution channel. This study closes the gap by recognizing the role of social media as a medium that transmits news to audiences, focusing on media credibility. Surveying 532 U.S. social media users, this study found that social media users' homophily with their contacts, source credibility, trust in alternative news sources, reliance on social media, and frequency of using social media to get news positively predict the perceived credibility of social media as a news medium.
A media firm's orientation toward R&D and innovation is largely determined by CEOs who frame market opportunities and drive investments in firm resources. As such, the CEO's traits (age, tenure, career background, and education) are known to be a predictor of firm R&D spending and attributed levels of innovation and firm performance. This paper explores how CEO traits influence levels of R&D-led innovation expenditure. It concludes that CEO traits had no influence on firm R&D expenditure and that a firm's "Research Intensity" is primarily influenced by their "cultural orientation toward innovation" and the "stage of the industry lifecycle" which is important given that firm innovation is essential for driving economic growth and improving competitiveness.
The year 2022 was a turbulent one for the audiovisual industry worldwide. In Hungary, two global streaming platforms, HBO Max and Disney+, launched their services, joining Netflix and some less popular streamers already on the scene. The content offered by these global streaming platforms has a lot in common compared to legacy television's supply in large markets. However, few studies have focused on small markets or "digital peripheries" where the inevitable global reach of new technologies and service providers mixes with more complicated local market realities. Our study aims to extend this body of knowledge to another small, "odd market," namely Hungary. It investigates how professionals perceive the television market in the wake of the advent of streaming in their current practice and from a strategic perspective on a small and specific national market such as Hungary. Using in-depth interviews (n = 9) with managers across organizations in the Hungarian audiovisual industry complemented by an analysis of publicly available secondary sources, our findings reveal three main clash areas in the market: established market presence, power within the supply chain, and content offering adding a potential framework for competitive analysis to studies of small media markets and the dynamics between legacy and streaming players.
Due to the novelty of the format, web series have been little studied. To address this gap, this research identifies and compares the nature, experiences, and practices of professional and amateur web series filmmakers. Thirty semi-structured interviews were conducted with Colombian professionals (15) and amateurs (15) covering 1) their training and experience; 2) their working practices and routines; 3) their creative processes; and 4) the financial aspects of their productions (salaries and budgets). The main findings suggest that web series production is similar for both types of filmmakers in most of these aspects and has evolved from both television practices and media industry logics. Moreover, both groups of filmmakers only innovate in terms of the technological possibilities and distribution of their web series, and their creativity is regulated and dependent on the approval of influential social and industry actors.
Digitalization affects media businesses, media marketplaces, and with every single user the entire society, as well. But which of the new technologies, media distribution and usage will last? "Location-based services" (LBS), allowing to localize mobile devices to provide media content tailored to the user's current context, appear to be a sound approach to meet the demands of fast, flexible and individualized communication. However, due to rapid technological developments, their future - still - remains uncertain. This contribution assesses relevant international LBS-experts in a two-round Delphi study. Findings indicate a strong emphasis on future challenges for (potential) LBS providers and developers, mainly addressing an intraorganizational level - especially with regard to workflows of traditionally oriented media enterprises. Further barriers brought up were privacy and security issues. Regarding the motivation to install LBS apps, scientists consider reliability, ease of use, and fulfillment of human needs to be of importance. Regarding hardware components, the indoor-deployment of LBS was - rather surprisingly - deemed much more promising than an outdoor use. Concerning trends in research, user-centered studies integrating psychological perspectives were brought up, as well as research on socio-ethical implications of LBS.
As subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) competition heats up with more newcomers beyond the quintessential Netflix, examining streaming video consumption from the perspective of an SVOD repertoire (a set of service subscriptions by a streaming user) can help the industry understand how consumers make decisions in forming their SVOD collection and their corresponding subscription patterns for marketing insights. Existing repertoire and SVOD studies still focus on users' content selections and preferences, and the mechanisms and drivers affecting customer choices, without realizing that consumers are not seeking to pick the best SVOD out of all. Instead, consumers are attempting to curate an exquisite selection of services that satisfy their content needs for a reasonable price while avoiding streaming confusion (uncertainty about where to access the content) and fatigue (too many options). This study explored consumers' SVOD repertoire within the U.S. context, investigating the SVOD repertoire patterns (size and composition) and differences in the SVOD repertoires regarding consumers' demographics, media ecosystem, streaming behavior, and perceived repertoire adequacy through an online survey method. Through an analysis of responses from 1038 participants, the study demonstrated the value of the repertoire approach in examining SVOD subscriptions. Results showed the dynamic importance of certain SVOD services and configuration changes of one's repertoire according to size. Netflix (as the likely core), Amazon Prime Video, and Hulu (as the two most likely complements) were the most subscribed SVODs. Differences were found in demographics, media ecosystem, streaming behavior, and perceived repertoire adequacy of users across different SVOD repertoire types.
Job ads are meant to capture the daily responsibilities of the position, as well as let candidates know the skills and qualities the right candidate for the job needs to demonstrate from the employer's perspective. While Aupperle and Grzeslo (2020) studied job ads of legacy media stations, Deavours and Grzeslo (2020) were among the first to explore local broadcast television station job ads. Yet, after the "Great Resignation" following the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as recent technology and business model changes, researchers need to continue to update and monitor the rapidly evolving needs of local newsrooms. This study seeks to provide insight through a content analysis of job postings from U.S. local television stations, exploring the experience, skills, and experience requirements necessary to be competitive in today's market, while also looking at how companies are working harder to attract talent. Using the theoretical lens of skills theory of leadership, the study also provides insight in hiring differences in station ownership, market size, and position type. Through content analysis of 349 job ads from 21 local news Designated Market Areas, findings suggest the field is embracing more convergent, digital reporting tactics, while still emphasizing the foundations of broadcast writing and visual storytelling. However, some of the most dramatic shifts in the industry toward innovation, emerging media, digital legal and ethical skills, and diversity are not reflected in job ads, creating little guidance for individuals and educators on how to prepare for an ever-changing job market.
Understanding consumers' perception of media brands in today's digitalized world is of major importance to media brands and advertisers alike. Influencing the media consumption experience, trust is one of the key drivers of this perception. Based on the differing business models as compared to brands, a specific foundation for the research on media brands is essential. Based on qualitative and quantitative data from Germany, the US, and South Korea we are able to present 17 "media" categories, building the foundation for a user-centric definition of media brands. Further, we identify eleven dimensions constituting the multidimensional construct of media brand trust.
Video game consumers are well-known for their brand engagement activities, but the interaction between brand engagement and brand authenticity in a video game context remains unknown. This study uses The Sims 4, an installment in a long-running, successful video game brand series, whose consumers are known for their particularly extensive engagement activities, to address this research gap. Thematic analysis informed by active story interpretation was used to analysis 2194 relevant online comments. The research identified that The Sims 4's consumers had expectations that certain gameplay features, deemed authentic to the brand and included in previous games, would be included in the game. However, when they were not included, consumers lowered their evaluations of the game's authenticity and value. Furthermore, consumers were frustrated that to get back these expected features they would have to create them themselves and they refused to do so. The findings advance knowledge of video game branding and provide practical implications for the industry. The industry cannot rely on consumers to create or fix a media brand's authenticity, no matter how engaged or active their consumers might be. Instead, video game media brands must listen, engage, and communicate with their consumers to ensure they deliver brand authenticity and the features expected by consumers.
The film industry can be a high-profit business, but it also comes with high financial risk. Since film production requires large investments, producers and investors are looking for clues on how to predict a film's financial success. This study identifies the relationship between two potential funding sources and a film's box office score. We compile a variety of data and analyses to increase the value of information in the decision-making process. Our main contribution is to define the relationship between the source of financing for the production (public subsidies and international co-production) and the success of the film. The research shows that while the diversity of sources may have an impact on the size of the budget, not necessarily on the box office of the film. Moreover, comedy was the only genre to significantly affect the box office revenues.
This study investigates the effects of Instagram news values and post features on audience engagement by sampling 2,100 news posts distributed by 12 U.S. local television stations' Instagram accounts. The content analysis results indicate that various news topics, message vividness and interactivity, post time, captions, and length significantly impact Instagram engagement rate by followers. The research further discusses managerial, practical implications for local broadcasters and digital publishers to optimize their Instagram content and enhance audience engagement.
Although many major, blockbuster mergers and acquisitions (M&As) in the telecommunications industry have attracted much attention from both the popular press and the media economic research community, small M&A deals in fact constitute the vast majority of business expansion activities in the telecommunications industry. Utilizing the data obtained from the Zephry database for over 2500 M&A cases involving U.S telecommunications companies, this study compares small and large blockbuster M&As in several aspects and analyzes whether several factors that have been shown to influence valuation of large M&As tend to affect small M&As to the same extent. According to the regression analysis, those factors, including financial market dynamics, M&A activity momentum, types of business expansion, and the involvement of foreign companies, influence the valuation of both small and large M&As. However, the direction and magnitude of the influences are quite different among small M&As.
This study examines if and how technological innovation influences market structure of the media industry. OLS regression analysis is employed to address the following research question: How do technological innovations affect the market structure of the media industry? Results suggest that changes in the adoption rates of television and cable television influence the media industry's market structure. The study discusses implications of these findings and recommends future related research efforts.
Content Design is advocated as one of the key factors influencing consumers' attitude and buying behavior. However, its real effects on sales performance remain largely unknown. We propose a research framework to evaluate the effect of content design on sales and empirically test its employability within the German magazine retail sector. To develop the research framework, we first derive a set of related success factors from several literature streams. We then conduct a content analysis of over 500 magazine covers and relate this data to real-life retail sales figures via linear mixed model analysis to investigate which aspects of content design affect sales. The findings point toward the usefulness of our proposed framework. They further indicate that in hedonic media consumption, the colors purple and blue, text-image congruence, wording that leads to ease of cognitive processing and promotional activities are pivotal in sales.
By seeking relationships with advertisers, actively posting social media users become "influencers" in the sense of influencer marketing. As such, they combine content based on person& stories or specific capabilities with third parties' commercial interests. Unlike research on well-known social media celebrities, in this study we focus on nascent media professionals in the early stages of developing from co-consumers to having their first financial success. We conducted a survey of 3500 such "nano" to "micro" influencers from a leading agency's German database to identify the principal components of attitudes that extant research proposes as drivers of formal professionalization. To achieve this, we operationalized and adapted theoretical concepts to influencers as a new kind of content creator. Characteristically, professionalization paralleled by reach is driven by a combination of established scales on entrepreneurial orientation, manifest in "proactiveness" and "risk-taking," as well as a brand orientation, resulting from "market mavenism" and "brand engagement in self-concept." However, a structural equation model not only suggests that there are additional drivers but also links the identified drivers to personality traits based on the five-factor OCEAN model. Hence, becoming an influencer is to some extent catalyzed by socialization; it requires the ability and willingness to entice an increasingly large followership with unique content, which represents both a challenge and an inspiration for incumbent media organizations.
