Tag Archives: television

Untangling the effects of TV watching on mortality

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Interpreting the results of studies can be difficult, particularly if one confuses a correlation (indicating some relationship between two variables) and a direct causal relationship (where one variable causes another). This usually is translated into the common phrase “correlation, not causation” which is illustrated in this example from Entertainment Weekly:

Researchers in Australia are reporting that, on average, every hour spent watching television after the age of 25 decreases the amount you live by 22 minutes.

“As a rule, the more time we spend watching TV, the more time we spend eating mindlessly in front of the TV, and the less time we spend being physically active,” explained Dr. David L. Katz, director of the Prevention Research Center at Yale University School of Medicine to HealthDay.com. “More eating and less physical activity, in turn, mean greater risk for obesity, and the chronic diseases it tends to anticipate, notably diabetes, heart disease and cancer.”

Before you throw your soul-sucking flat screen out the window, here’s a key thing to remember:

TVs are not like the year-draining torture machine in The Princess Bride. This study measures a casual lifestyle correlation — people who watch a lot of TV, on average, die younger than those who do not.

This seems to make sense – it is not TV watching that is the real issue but rather sitting around a lot, which is related to TV watching. This was echoed in the HealthDay story the EW post refers to:

But other experts cautioned that the study did not show that TV watching caused people to die sooner, only that there was an association between watching lots of TV and a shorter lifespan.

But I wonder if this is more of a conceptual issue that an analysis issue on the part of the original researchers. While I can’t access the original article, here is part of the abstract that sheds light on the issue:

Methods The authors constructed a life table model that incorporates a previously reported mortality risk associated with TV time. Data were from the Australian Bureau of Statistics and the Australian Diabetes, Obesity and Lifestyle Study, a national population-based observational survey that started in 1999–2000. The authors modelled impacts of changes in population average TV viewing time on life expectancy at birth.

Results The amount of TV viewed in Australia in 2008 reduced life expectancy at birth by 1.8 years (95% uncertainty interval (UI): 8.4 days to 3.7 years) for men and 1.5 years (95% UI: 6.8 days to 3.1 years) for women. Compared with persons who watch no TV, those who spend a lifetime average of 6 h/day watching TV can expect to live 4.8 years (95% UI: 11 days to 10.4 years) less. On average, every single hour of TV viewed after the age of 25 reduces the viewer’s life expectancy by 21.8 (95% UI: 0.3–44.7) min. This study is limited by the low precision with which the relationship between TV viewing time and mortality is currently known.

Conclusions TV viewing time may be associated with a loss of life that is comparable to other major chronic disease risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity.

Some key parts of this:

1. This was done using life table models, not correlations. Without seeing the full article, it is hard to know exactly what the researchers did. Did they simply calculate a life table (see an example in 7.2 here) or did they run a model that included other independent variables?

2. Their confidence intervals are really wide. For example, the amount of TV watched in 2008 could only shorten someone’s life by 8.7 days, hardly a substantively significant amount over the course of a lifetime. Watching 6 hours a day on average (compared to those who watch no TV), could live just 11 minute shorter lives.

3. The abstract suggests there is “low precision” because this link hasn’t been studied before. If this is true, then we need a lot more science on the topic and more data. This article, then, becomes an opening or early study on the topic and is not the “definitive” study.

4. The conclusion section says “may be associated with a loss of life that is comparable to other major chronic disease risk factors such as physical inactivity and obesity.” The key word here is “may.” This might simply be an academic qualification but it is an important distinction between saying “proved” (how the public might want to interpret it).

Here is my guess at what happened: media reports (or perhaps even a press release) about the study were a lot more strident about these results than the researchers themselves. In fact, here is a piece from the HealthDay piece that suggests this may be the case:

Researchers in Australia found that people who averaged six hours a day of TV lived, on average, nearly five years less than people who watched no TV.

The emphasis here is on the average, not necessarily the confidence interval. This would be like reporting poll results that say a candidate leads by 6 over an opponent but forgetting to mention that the margin of error (a confidence interval) is 5.9.

What the HealthDay report should include: comments from the researchers themselves explaining the work. Interestingly, the story quickly suggests that other researchers say there are other factors at work but we never hear from the original researchers outside of a few pieces lifted from the study. Without the proper context, a study can become a “shock headline” used by media sites to drive traffic.

I do have to ask: does Entertainment Weekly have a vested interest in debunking a study like this since they are in the business of reviewing television shows and channels?

Connecting Arrested Development’s George Bluth and McMansions

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Amidst news that the television show Arrested Development will return via Netflix, I saw recently a connection between the patriarch of the show, George Bluth, and McMansions in an opinion piece dealing with a New York Times op-ed on sprawl from earlier in the week:

Rarely is a discouraging word ever spoken against government spending millions to widen roads, install sewerage mains, and build schools so George Bluth Bill Pulte can build yet another exurban mcmansion development.

The reference to Bill Pulte refers to Pulte Homes, self-described as “one of the nation’s largest homebuilders.” (From personal experience, I can safely say Pulte did not build only McMansions.) This is not the first time I’ve seen this connection. Indeed, a quick Google search of “George Bluth” AND McMansion turns up 708 results. One poster in a discussion of McMansions at DemocraticUnderground.com even went so far as to ask ” WWGBD? What would George Bluth do?” Probably not the best question to guide one’s life.  An Entertainment Weekly review after the pilot emphasized McMansions as part of the setting for the show:

Shot in digital video and freed from the enhanced indulgence of a studio audience, the show romps in McMansionland and finds plenty to laugh at: grad students practicing Native American drum rituals, maids on public transportation carting racks full of furs for storage, and housing developments with names like Sudden Valley.

I don’t know if this is an authoritative site including all AD scripts but this search for “McMansions” turns up no matches. And having seen all of the episodes, I do remember the show poking fun at these neighborhoods (giant homes built in what looked like partially completed neighborhoods in a desert) but can’t recall the main characters really ruing the fact that the family business involved building McMansions. While the irony was surely intended to draw attention to the absurdity of such homes, are they ever specifically denounced on the show?

This isn’t the only television show connected to McMansions. The Sopranos also invited comparisons as they lived in a well-appointed New Jersey home and certain reality shows, like The Bachelor/Bachelorette have prompted critics to say the contestants live in McMansions.

The NFL says the “All-22” camera angle is proprietary information

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The NFL is a TV ratings powerhouse and makes billions each year on selling television rights. However, fans don’t see the same action that the league and teams watch because the league claims its “All-22” view is proprietary information:

If you ask the league to see the footage that was taken from on high to show the entire field and what all 22 players did on every play, the response will be emphatic. “NO ONE gets that,” NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy wrote in an email. This footage, added fellow league spokesman Greg Aiello, “is regarded at this point as proprietary NFL coaching information.”

For decades, NFL TV broadcasts have relied most heavily on one view: the shot from a sideline camera that follows the progress of the ball. Anyone who wants to analyze the game, however, prefers to see the pulled-back camera angle known as the “All 22.”

While this shot makes the players look like stick figures, it allows students of the game to see things that are invisible to TV watchers: like what routes the receivers ran, how the defense aligned itself and who made blocks past the line of scrimmage.

By distributing this footage only to NFL teams, and rationing it out carefully to its TV partners and on its web site, the NFL has created a paradox. The most-watched sport in the U.S. is also arguably the least understood. “I don’t think you can get a full understanding without watching the entirety of the game,” says former head coach Bill Parcells. The zoomed-in footage on TV broadcasts, he says, only shows a “fragment” of what happens on the field.

Why does the NFL do this? Here are a few plausible scenarios:

1. It can do it so it will. The NFL won’t be bullied into doing something it doesn’t want to do. As long as the money keeps pouring in for TV rights, there is little pressure the public can put on the league for this footage.

1a. If enough fans and commentators picked up on this, could they force the NFL’s hand? It seems unlikely.

2. The NFL makes billions on TV rights and perhaps wants to package this video in a certain way. A later part of the story suggests the NFL has quietly floated the idea of selling access to this footage.

3. The league is worried about legitimate football competitors. There are not currently any viable threats but this could pop up again.

4. The league thinks this is the core data of the NFL, what actually happens on all plays, and will go to great lengths to protect its “intellectual property.” I find this a little hard to believe: aren’t there plenty of people who could understand and scheme what happens on a football field even if the primary camera angle doesn’t show it? Are teams really that worried about what the public might see or that other teams are missing things in the video?

Michael Bay putting together new TV show about sociology professor who studies subcultures

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There are not too many sociologists in television shows or movies but producer Michael Bay is currently working on a show that has a sociologist in a prominent role:

Michael Bay is on board to exec produce an hourlong drama for the CW.

Net has bought the script “Outsiders” from writer Adam Glass, who most recently was a writer and supervising producer on “Supernatural.” He was also on staff on “Cold Case” and “The Cleaner.”

Storyline involves a quirky sociology professor with an almost savant-like expertise in subcultures. He is partnered with a young but uptight female detective and the pair solve crimes involving youths and subcultures in Los Angeles…

New CW topper Mark Pedowitz has said he’s interested in expanding the net’s reach beyond the core 18-34 female demo. A Bay series would likely bring along a male audience, and potentially tap into the international market.

Who knew that young males wanted to watch television about quirky, savant-like male sociologists? And how many odd subcultures could a show like this display?

“The Sociology of Professional Wrestling” course

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Even as news about the Sociology of Jay-Z course at Georgetown continues to spread, I ran into news about a sociology course about professional wrestling:

On Oct. 16, professional wrestling came to Brock University with the third annual “Brock Brawl”. The live pro wrestling event not only served as entertainment for members of the Brock community, it also represented a learning experience for students at Brock enrolled in the SOCI 3P55 course, also known as, “The Sociology of Professional Wrestling”.

Daniel Glenday, a Professor in the Department of Sociology, teaches Sociology (SOCI) 3P55 at Brock, which is the only course offered in North America that purely focuses on pro wrestling.

“The idea of this course is to ‘wise people up’ to wrestling,” said Glenday. “It’s a big part of cultures all around the world, but no one is studying it. It’s everywhere, so we should really take a look at what it means.”…

The Sociology of Professional Wrestling was first offered at Brock in 2006. Glenday said the course addresses the misunderstandings and prejudices people have towards pro wrestling, which has been criticized for its “excessive violence, sexism, homophobia and ethnic/racial stereotyping”. Glenday also hopes to dismiss the argument that pro wrestling leads to an increase in bullying by younger girls and boys.

I assume there would a lot of material to work with in this course regarding masculinity, violence, and popular culture.

Is professional wrestling still popular? I know it is still on the air but I haven’t seen many commercials for it or heard about it leaking out into the popular culture. One website suggests the October 10th Monday Night Raw pulled down a rating of 3.2 and the latest “Impact Wrestling” (Thu Oct 13) had a 0.5 rating (better than “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report”). Perhaps I am in the wrong target demographic and/or am not watching the right channels.

“Suburgatory” picked up for a full first season

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Based on the audience for the first three episodes, ABC’s new show Suburgatory has been renewed for a full first season. The number of viewers for the first three episodes has been impressive: 9.81 million, 9.11 million, and 8.92 million.

I haven’t had a chance to see an episode yet – perhaps its popularity is really due to the fact that it offers something new? It does have a nice time slot between The Middle and Modern Family. Interestingly though, Episode 3 had a 3.1 rating, slightly higher than The Middle (2.9 rating) but below Modern Family (5.9 rating). Episode 4 airs tonight.

American Academy of Pediatrics: television has no positive effects on children under two

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Here is a new recommendation from the American Academy of Pediatrics about children under two watching TV:

Their verdict: It’s not good, and probably bad.

Media, whether playing in the background or designed explicitly as an infant educational tool, “have potentially negative effects and no known positive effects for children younger than 2 years,” concluded the AAP’s report, released Oct. 18 at the Academy’s annual meeting in Boston and scheduled for November publication in the journal Pediatrics. “Although infant/toddler programming might be entertaining, it should not be marketed as or presumed by parents to be educational.”…

As screens proliferated, so did research. “There have been about 50 studies that have come out on media use by children in this age group between 1999 and now,” said Ari Brown, a pediatrician and member of the AAP committee that wrote the new report…

Three studies since 1999 have tracked educational television use and language development, and they found a link between increased TV time and developmental delays. Whether that’s a cause or effect — parents who leave kids in front of televisions might simply be poor teachers — isn’t clear, nor are the long-term effects, but the AAP called the findings “concerning.” In the same vein, there may also be a link to attention problems.

Several thoughts about this:

1. This article suggests researchers have found a correlation, not necessarily causation. But since researchers have not found any positive effects, they must feel confident in issuing this recommendation.

2. Does research suggest that television has some positive effects for children over two years old? Overall, are there studies that suggest television has positive effects for adults?

3. What does this do for children’s programs and videos? What about all of those “Baby Einstein” videos? Will new cottage industries spring up to fill this void?

No sociological explanations for “the year of the sitcom”?

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A critic suggests we don’t need big sociological explanations to understand why television viewers have returned to sitcoms:

For the Chinese, this is the Year of the Rabbit; to the Jews, it’s 5772. And for journalists covering the TV business? That’s simple: It’s the Year of the Sitcom! Early coverage of the 2011–12 small screen season’s winners and losers has understandably focused on the fact that comedies such as New Girl, Suburgatory, and 2 Broke Girls seem to be doing far better than other kinds of programming this fall. This is what those of us who cover entertainment call a “trend,” and as such, we feel a profound professional responsibility to dig deep and search our souls for the answers: Why laughter? Why now? This will almost certainly result in a dramatic uptick in articles featuring sprawling sociological theories supported by quotes from ubiquitous TV historian Robert J. Thompson and all manner of Hollywood insiders: People want to laugh in a down economy! Comedies only take 30 minutes to watch, and we’re all too busy for dramas! We’ve found a funnier, totally new way to make comedies that’s unlike anything you’ve seen before! But no matter how intelligently the stories are written, or how wise the talking heads doing the explaining might be, the bottom line about TV’s alleged sitcom renaissance is much simpler. It’s just not nearly as interesting…

To understand what’s happening with comedies right now, consider how things often work in the movie business. After X-Men hit big in 2000, Hollywood decided to make Spider-Man and many, many more superhero movies. After audiences demonstrated a willingness to watch girls be gross in Bridesmaids, you could almost hear studio bosses shouting from their offices, “Get me the next Kristen Wiig!” TV is no different; it can just react to trends more quickly. And so, when ABC’s Modern Family rocketed on to TV in 2009, networks suddenly started feeling sitcoms might be worth the risk again, as co-creator Steve Levitan told Variety last summer. “My guess is that programmers see the success of a show like Modern Family and it gives them the impetus, the appetite to program more comedies,” he told the industry trade. This is why, post-MF, CBS decided to roll the dice and try half-hours on Thursdays; Fox chose to double down its efforts at finding live-action laughers by launching an hour-long post-Glee sitcom block; and this fall, new sitcom blocks have popped up on both Tuesdays (ABC) and Wednesdays (NBC). All told, that’s eight new half-hour slots for comedy to try to gain a foothold with viewers. Since TV types love talking in sports metaphors, put it this way: More at-bats generally result in more runners getting on base, and with a little luck, more runs scored. Likewise, while producing lots and lots of comedies is no guarantee of success (NBC once programmed a massive eighteen sitcoms one fall), you’re almost certainly going to up the odds of finding worthwhile new comedies by aggressively playing the game rather than sitting on the bench and hoping reality shows get you the win…

Bottom line? There may be no grand logic behind why sometimes we watch a lot of comedies and other times we waste our time on reality shows or obsess over the personal lives of melodramatic medical practitioners. And often it’s just a matter of finding the right balance of numbers of shows (a glut is a glut) and networks figuring out the best way to schedule them. So let’s all resist the urge to make up sociological or economic explanations for the sitcom’s resurgence. (Thereby freeing up Robert J. Thompson’s day: Hey, Bob, why don’t you and Paul Dergarabedian go whale watching? You deserve a break from all the quoting!) Yes, these are tough times, but they do not necessarily make people more eager to laugh: In boom times, do people come home and say, “I’ve been smiling all day and I’m tired of it: give me something dour to balance me out!” They do not. And viewers are not being lured back by new innovations in comedy: Sure, Zooey Deschanel is a unique personality, but Two and a Half Men remains top-rated, and that’s just The Odd Couple with more erection jokes. (Though who could forget the Odd Couple classic, “Felix gets his junk caught in his tie-clip case”?) As ever, trends are just another way of saying that success breeds imitation, whether it’s comedies, dramas, movies, or Angus hamburgers — available for a limited time only!

A few thoughts:

1. So the best explanation is that TV networks have simply put more sitcoms out there and several have caught on? This Moneyball-esque explanation (you are bound to have more hit shows if you simply put more out there!) could have some merit. Think about the music, movie, book publishing, and TV industries. The companies behind the products have little idea which particular products will prove successful and so they throw all sorts of options at the public. To have a successful year within each industry, only a few of these products have to have spectacular success. Essentially, these few popular ones can subsidize the rest of the industry. There is no magic formula for writing a successful sitcom, movie, book, or album so companies throw a lot of products at the wall and see what sticks.

2. A note: those people peddling “sprawling sociological theories” sound like they are not sociologists but rather “pop sociologists.” To really get at this issue, we would have to compare success of different genres over time to try to see if there is a relationship between genre and social circumstances at the time. Yes, I agree that people can be quick to find big explanations for new phenomena…and do so without consulting any data. Knee-jerk reactions are not too helpful.

3. At the same time, one might argue that the tastes of the public guided or at least prompted by some of these sociological factors. While there are no set formulas, won’t “good shows” win out? Not in all circumstances – think of the “critical darlings” versus those that end up being popular. Perhaps we need to ask a different question: how do shows become popular? What kind of marketing campaigns pull people in and how does effective “word of mouth” spread?

Brit Derren Brown to test four sociology (?) theories on TV

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If you search for YouTube videos of the famous Milgram Experiment, you’ll run into an interesting recreation on the BBC hosted by Derren Brown (see part one of three here). When I’ve showed this to students, they tend to ask why a TV performer gets to perform this experiment but no university IRB would likely allow this. I don’t know the answer to this. But, Brown is back with a new show where he is going to test four more sociological theories:

His new show, The Experiment, will see Brown trying out four sociological theories on unsuspecting citizens.

The performer said: “Three of them are relatively dark, looking into the darker side of human behaviour, and one of them is rather positive and jolly. The first one is called The Assassin.”…

He explained: “It’s whether or not it’s possible to hypnotise somebody to kill, to carry out an assassination. This is based on the testimonies given by political assassins who say they were brainwashed by the CIA.”

Some of the theories have their origins in academia, while some of them are developed by Brown himself. Which is even more concerning.

So perhaps this isn’t terribly sociological and is more entertainment/conspiracy theory. What would it take to get an American host to replicate some famous or intriguing sociological experiments on TV? What about things like the Ultimatum Game and how the results can differ across groups and cultures? Instead, we are stuck with weaker shows like What Would You Do. A show that could demonstrate that sociological studies are both intriguing and beneficial for society could go a long way toward boosting the image of the discipline.

David Simon, The Wire co-creator, to receive William Julius Wilson award

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The Wire has been used in a number of college courses (one example here) and now David Simon, co-creator of the HBO series, will be awarded the William Julius Wilson award from Washington State University:

David Simon, co-creator of the HBO television series “The Wire,” has been named recipient of the Washington State University William Julius Wilson Award for the Advancement of Social Justice…

Wilson received his doctoral degree in sociology from WSU and is one of the nation’s leading scholars in the fields of African American studies, race, civil rights, poverty and social and public policy issues. He was the first person to receive the award named in his honor in 2009. He is scheduled to attend this symposium…

“We are honoring David Simon with this award because of his significant and innovative contributions to promote social policy, in particular by raising the public’s awareness of systemic social inequality, poverty and the complex way that social surroundings affect individual-level decisions,” said Julie Kmec, associate professor of sociology and chair of the committee organizing the event…

Three Harvard scholars, including Wilson, recently pointed out that the series has “done more to enhance both the popular and the scholarly understanding of the challenges of urban life and the problems of urban inequality than any other program in the media or academic publication.”

Several questions:

1. I wonder if this award for Simon, also a former journalist, is part of a larger trend (the ASA has been doing this for a few years now – David Brooks was the latest to be recognized) of sociologists recognizing journalists as key people/gatekeepers for spreading sociological ideas.

2. What other television shows accomplish similar things to The Wire?

3. I had forgotten that William Julius Wilson received his PhD from Washington State since he is more commonly associated with the University of Chicago or Harvard. Of prominent sociologists, how many have received degrees from places like Washington State versus the typical top-ranked programs (Harvard, Chicago, Berkeley, Wisconsin-Madison, etc.)?