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We study the political impact of commercial television in Italy exploiting the staggered introduction of Berlusconi’s private TV network, Mediaset, in the early 1980s. We find that individuals with early access to Mediaset all-entertainment content were more likely to vote for Berlusconi’s party in 1994, when he first ran for office. The effect persists for five elections and is driven by heavy TV viewers, namely the very young and the elderly. Regarding possible mechanisms, we find that individuals exposed to entertainment TV as children were less cognitively sophisticated and civic-minded as adults, and ultimately more vulnerable to Berlusconi’s populist rhetoric.

Much prior work illuminates how fans of a brand can contribute to the value enjoyed by other members of its audience, but little is known about any processes by which fans contribute to the dissipation of that audience. Using longitudinal data on America’s Next Top Model, a serial brand, and conceptualizing brands as assemblages of heterogeneous components, this article examines how fans can contribute to the destabilization of a brand’s identity and fuel the dissipation of audiences of which they have been members. This work suggests that explanations focusing on satiation, psychology, or semiotics are inadequate to account for dissipation in the audience for serial brands. Moreover, the perspective advanced here highlights how fans can create doppelgänger brand images and contribute to the co-destruction of serial brands they have avidly followed.

We estimate the effect of television on fertility in Brazil, where soap operas portray small families. We exploit differences in the timing of entry into different markets of Globo, the main novela producer. Women living in areas covered by Globo have significantly lower fertility. The effect is strongest for women of lower socioeconomic status and in the central and late phases of fertility, consistent with stopping behavior. The result does not appear to be driven by selection in Globo entry. We provide evidence that novelas, and not just television, affected individual choices, based on children's naming patterns and novela content.

We explore how television broadcasting of unrelated criminal justice events affects sentencing. Exploiting as-good-as-random variation in news content before a verdict, we find that sentences are 3 months longer when the verdict is reached after coverage of crime. Sentences increase with media exposure to crime, not crime itself, and the effect tapers off quickly. Our results suggest that professional experience and expertise mitigate the effect of irrelevant external information. This paper highlights the influence of noise in the news cycle: media can temporarily influence decisions by changing what is top of the mind rather than signaling deeper changes in offending or societal concerns.

Responsible financial habits are important for economic welfare, yet it remains unclear whether they can be effectively taught. Entertainment media offers a unique and cost-effective channel of reaching millions of viewers with financial education messages that resonate. This paper uses random and symmetric encouragement methodology to study the economic impact of targeted messages on debt management and gambling scripted in a popular television soap opera in South Africa. The results show treated viewers score significantly higher on financial knowledge, are more likely to borrow from formal sources and for productive purposes, and are less likely to enter into retail credit or gamble. Quantitative and qualitative analyses of mechanisms show strong recall of messages conveyed by the lead character, which supports theories of psychological and emotional influences on decision-making.

The article examines incentives for exclusive distribution of premium television programming. Static analysis shows that a vertically integrated operator with premium programming always supplies this content to the rival distributor, using per-subscriber fees to soften competition. In a dynamic setting with switching costs exclusivity confers a market share advantage, benefiting the operator in the future. Under certain conditions this future benefit outweighs the opportunity cost of forgone wholesale fees, making exclusivity the preferred choice. Alternative dynamic mechanisms are explored, identifying essential features. The analysis explains the observed incidence of content exclusivity in pay TV and provides guidance for policy makers.

Is the involvement of stars critical to the success of motion pictures? Film studios, which regularly pay multimillion-dollar fees to stars, seem to be driven by that belief. This article sheds light on the returns on this investment using an event study that considers the impact of more than 1200 casting announcements on trading behavior in a simulated and real stock market setting. The author finds evidence that the involvement of stars affects movies' expected theatrical revenues and provides insight into the magnitude of this effect. For example, the estimates suggest that, on average, stars are worth approximately $3 million in theatrical revenues. In a cross-sectional analysis grounded in the literature on group dynamics, the author also examines the determinants of the magnitude of stars' impact on expected revenues. Among other things, the author shows that the stronger a cast already is, the greater is the impact of a newly recruited star with a track record of box office successes or with a strong artistic reputation. Finally, in an extension to the study, the author does not find that the involvement of stars in movies increases the valuation of film companies that release the movies, thus providing insufficient grounds to conclude that stars add more value than they capture. The author discusses implications for managers in the motion picture industry.

Illegal consumer file sharing of motion pictures is considered a major threat to the movie industry. Whereas industry advocates and some scholars postulate a cannibalistic effect on commercial forms of movie consumption, other researchers deny this effect, though sound evidence is lacking on both sides. Drawing on extant research and utility theory, the authors present hypotheses on the consequences and determinants of consumer file sharing and test them with data from a controlled longitudinal panel study of German consumers. The data contain information on the consumers' intentions toward and actual behavior in relation to the consumption of 25 new motion pictures, allowing the authors to study more than 10,000 individual file-sharing opportunities. The authors test the effect of file sharing on commercial movie consumption using a series of ReLogit regression analyses and apply partial least squares structural equation modeling to identify the determinants of consumer file sharing. They find evidence of substantial cannibalization of theater visits, DVD rentals, and DVD purchases responsible for annual revenue losses of $300 million in Germany. Five categories of file-sharing behavior drive file sharing and have a significant impact on how consumers obtain and watch illegal movie copies.

This paper explores the potential use of entertainment media programs for achieving development goals. I propose a simple framework for interpreting media effects that hinges on three channels: (i) information provision, (ii) role modeling and preference change, and (iii) time use. I then review the existing evidence on how exposure to commercial television and radio affects outcomes such as fertility preferences, gender norms, education, migration, and social capital. I complement these individual country studies with cross-country evidence from Africa and with a more in-depth analysis for Nigeria, using the Demographic Health Surveys. I then consider the potential educational role of entertainment media, starting with a discussion of the psychological underpinnings and then reviewing recent rigorous evaluations of edutainment programs. I conclude by highlighting open questions and avenues for future research.

This paper contributes to the Business Ethics literature by unpacking the multimodal construction of moral narratives in popular culture and its portrayals of organizations and organizational roles. Understanding such portrayals and their construction is crucial to Business Ethics scholarship because they shape organizational imaginaries, influencing understandings and expectations of the ethical/moral responsibilities of organizations and the actors within them. In particular, we study the construction of moral narratives within a reality TV show that focuses on immigration and border control at an airport. We find that the immigration officers are depicted as rational and heroic figures whilst the travellers are presented as emotional and potentially dangerous characters. Our analysis highlights how this is achieved via five multimodal editing dimensions—the structure of interactional scenes, the ability to address the camera, the narrator's comments, the visual and music effects—that are key in constructing clearly defined personae. We show how, through the intersubjective construction of clear-cut characters, the show downplays the moral complexity of its content. Portraying immigration officers as heroic, while presenting travellers as potentially dangerous, allows for a silencing of any ethical questioning of immigration officers' organizational practices.