Spanish TV Regulations and Audiences for Soccer Matches, Factors Influencing Utility from Watching TV, and How Media Coverage Influences Financial Returns for Australian Companies

Abstract

This issue has two articles with significant contributions to our understanding of television viewing, and a third article with a new perspective on how media coverage affects corporate reputations. The first article is an empirical examination of Spanish television regulations requiring free broadcasts of sports events that are of general interest to the country’s population. The study uses panel data analysis of television ratings from free broadcasts of soccer matches to test the effects of the policy. The second article develops a Bayesian model of utility from television viewing that includes social externalities and whether viewers watched previous episodes of a TV program. This study develops a simulation from the model that results in recommended strategies for television programmers. The third article examines the effects of media coverage on the corporate reputations of publicly traded Australian firms. The study uses the tone of media coverage to group companies by reputation, and then examines each group’s risk adjusted returns before, during, and after the global financial crisis of 2007. The first article is “Are Broadcast Sporting Events of ‘General Interest’? A Regional Panel Data Analysis of TV Ratings for Spain’s La Liga,” by Levi Pérez, Víctor Puente, and Plácido Rodríguez. This study examines a Spanish policy that regulates the broadcast of sporting events on free and paid television channels. Spanish regulations require that sporting events of “general interest” appear on free television. Spanish regulations also give the free channel priority over paid channels when selecting which matches will be broadcast free. This has spurred a debate about how to find the best balance between the intellectual property rights owned by pay television channels and serving the information needs of Spanish audiences. There are no surveys that identify soccer matches of “general interest,” defined as matches that appeal to audiences across 10 different regions of Spain. The authors therefore used panel data analysis of 4 years of ratings to identify matches of general interest. The dependent variable was the number of viewers watching weekly free soccer matches in all 10 Spanish