The health care overhaul might get a Hollywood rewrite. The California Endowment, a private foundation that is spending millions to promote President Barack Obama’s signature law, recently provided a $500,000 grant to ensure TV writers and producers have information about the Affordable Care Act that can be stitched into plot […] Read more »
Americans’ Satisfaction With Life Similar to Levels in 1998
After headlines have often trumpeted news of a continuing federal budget deficit, persistently high unemployment, and a slow-to-recover housing market in the U.S. in recent years, the prevailing wisdom might be that these developments are affecting Americans’ satisfaction with their lives. Yet Americans report high levels of satisfaction with many […] Read more »
The Myth of the ‘War of the Worlds’ Panic
Wednesday marks the 75th anniversary of Orson Welles’ electrifying War of the Worlds broadcast, in which the Mercury Theatre on the Air enacted a Martian invasion of Earth. … The panic inspired by Welles made War of the Worlds perhaps the most notorious event in American broadcast history. … There’s […] Read more »
Why box-office surprises are becoming more common
… For decades, tracking was used by studios to determine filmgoer interest ahead of a new movie’s release and tell marketing executives where to spend their ad dollars. … But at a time when tracking’s influence on a film’s box-office fate has never been greater, chronic inaccuracies have led industry […] Read more »
Digital devices give a big boost to book reading
In an age of countless digital distractions, a significant number of Americans, especially those ages 18 to 40, report they are reading more books thanks to their e-readers and tablets. A national poll of adults, conducted for USA TODAY and Bookish, a website designed to help readers discover and buy […] Read more »
Nielsen to Measure Twitter Chatter About TV Shows
… Nielsen is now measuring what it calls the “unique audience” for Twitter posts about television, providing a more complete view of the phenomenon known as social TV. On Monday the company is introducing Nielsen Twitter TV Ratings, a product announced last year that professes to measure all the activity […] Read more »