Myles P. Breen

Myth in the Television Discourse.

With perspectives from both traditional and contemporary disciplines, the universality of myth and its functions are investigated within the framework of television, employing examples from television news coverage and popular culture. The role of the communication scholar and the artist with regard to the creation and destruction of mythologies is examined.

Teaching film: A case study

This article addresses itself to the Speech teacher who teaches some aspect of film studies or who may do so in the future. A case study is presented in which a History of Film course is designed, taught, and evaluated. The books, films, and other materials are listed. Various strategies of presentation, discussion, handling individual projects, and gauging student reaction are described. The case study focuses upon the work of the late John Ford.

The relationship between attractiveness and credibility of television commercials as perceived by children

The relationship between childrens perception of the attractiveness and the credibility of television commercials was investigated. Specifically, this study was designed to determine if children like commercials they believe or believe commercials they like. Results indicated a moderate correlation between the perceived attractiveness and the credibility of the commercials. Children are capable of making selective value judgments about the cleverness, happiness, truth and reality of the message.

The parameters of documentary in the communications curriculum

Because “documentary” is such an ill‐defined concept, the instructor can only point to those demarcation lines which delimit the documentary area. In the communication curriculum, these parameters can be found in studying the attempts by critics at definition, examining the documentary still photograph, studying representative films of documentarists, following selected controversies, and analyzing the effect of the documentary on the audience.

Rhetorical criticism and media: The state‐of‐the‐art

The insights of historian Daniel Boorstin are added to those of Lynn White, Harold Innis, Edmund Carpenter, Marshall McLuhan and Walter Ong to explicate the position of Technological Determinist: If the medium is the message, and rhetorical analysts have traditionally concentrated their study on the contents of messages on television, then rhetorical analysis needs to revise its methodology.

The Flow of Television Programs from America to Australia.

b American trade with Australia began on Nov. I , 1792, when Captain Thomas Patrickson brought the Philadelphia into Sydney Harbour.’ In fact, trade between America and the infant colony was established before the Australians began to trade with England, the “mother country.” Most Americans today know absolutely nothing a b o u t their own nation’s involvement in Australia’s history and fortunes; yet, while America exports culture and technology worldwide, it has a par t icu lar ly recept ive m a r k e t in Australia. Aus t ra l ia , in media t e r m s , is complementary to the United States. The U.S. is a large country and a media exporter. Australia is a small country, yet, in dollar volume terms, one of the largest importers of television programs and other cultural artifacts from the U.S.A.2 As a model of information flow, the relationship is relatively unconfounded by disparities of language, cultural heritage, political tradition and standard of living. Fifteen years ago, Dizard reported that “The daily schedule of a typical Australian television station is, particularly in prime listening hours, virtually indistinguishable from that of a station in Iowa or New Jersey.”3 However, in the last few years, Australia has made a concerted national effort to check, or even

Consumer-Oriented Course Employs Simulation Tactics.

A t the present time, courses in mass communication tend to emphasize one of two general approaches. The first approach we might call the “media” approach, the second, the “consumer” approach. By far the most common is the “media” course approach which examines the nature, the organization, the development, and the effects of each of the media. If the function of the course is to serve as a survey of the media or as a n introductory course for academic programs in the media, such an approach is appropriate. This emphasis on the media as rather independent phenomena is less appropriate, however, if the purpose of the course is to serve a broadly based consumeroriented audience. The relatively few mass communication courses emphasizing analysis rather than description focus less on the media forms and much more on the mass communication processes, the media as systems of interrelated parts, the nature of the messages produced, and the resultant effects of those messages upon the consumer. One such course, with a very practical bent, was described by Bailey and Mogavero in 1977 in Journalism Edueator. I The consumer-oriented course on mass communication at Northern Illinois University is designed for general education credit for all students at the university. It is also required as a basic introduction in

Viewpoint: No mere Rorschach

McLuhan is once again the subject, the author contending the Canadian guru is worth considerably more to the field than the limited role assigned him in this space several issues back by a previous critic. Breen is on the speech communication faculty at Northern Illinois University.

A film production course

Student demand is cited in addition to theoretical rationale to make a case for a practical film production course within a communication curriculum. A college level course is described with some applications to two‐year‐college and high school courses. Choice of equipment, equipment and processing costs, appropriate instructional films, filmed exercises for student projects, and a range of current textbooks are among the matters discussed.