With the introduction of Nintendo video-games on a large scale, reports of children having seizures while playing suggested a possible specific, provocative factor. Although 50% of the photosensitive patients are also sensitive to a 50-Hz television, nonphotosensitive patients with a history of video-game seizures were described as well. The question arises whether this is a mere coincidence, p...

Television networks compete for both viewers and advertisers. Recent theoretical work has modeled the impact of viewers’ and advertisers’ network usage on the other group. Empirical work has not kept pace. I estimate viewer demand for television programs as a function of program characteristics, audience flow, day and time effects, and time given to advertising. I find audiences are highly resp...

The impact of television on children has been analyzed from various perspectives. The social cognitive theory of mass communication explicates the mechanism of children’s social learning from television. The premise of this study is that television may have positive effects on youngsters by exploring prosocial themes and developing community-oriented content. A distinctive example of prosocial ...

In 1908, the German mathematician and mathematics educator Felix Klein published a series of three books (in German) under the title of Elementary Mathematics from an Advanced Standpoint, henceforth called EMAS for short. The first volume was subtitled Arithmetic, Algebra, Analysis, and the second volume was subtitled Geometry. Both of these volumes were translated into English in the1930s, and...

We have designed and constructed a mechanism for using caption text from broadcast television programs to analyze their content. In this paper, we describe the method by which captions are captured and translated from the raw video signal into text on the ViewStation. We also describe our Caption Parser, which analyzes the text and extracts information about the content of broadcast television ...

FALL 2015 73 The recent explosion of content (such as movies, TV shows, sports, and others) available on television coupled with an increase use in mobile devices (that is, smartphones and tablets) has created significant interest in second-screen applications from both end users and content providers. Second screen applications are designed to run from mobile devices and to enhance the televis...

what is the reaction of viewers when characters speak directly to the audience—breaking the invisible "fourth wall" of the theater—in films or television programs? Mel Brooks did this in "Blazing Saddles" and, more recently, Gary Shandling did in his television program with questions like: "Does my hair look OK?" This experiment using college students suggests that audiences do, within limits, ...