BEA2025

Welcome to BEA2025! Grab a cup of coffee and a muffin and get the inside knowledge on BEA initiatives, volunteer opportunities and journals. Panelists will give you tips on navigating BEA's annual convention and NAB Show.

Grounded in a Diffusion of Innovations perspective, this panel presentation traces the evolution of the technology and messaging of the U.S. Armed Forces Network (AFN) from its early beginnings to today. The panel will cover the evolution of technology utilized by the U.S. armed forces and its parallels in technology utilized by the AFN. It will also examine the evolution of the messaging by AFN to troops abroad as to propaganda, health & safety, PSA’s, news, entertainment, and sports programming.
Moderator: Lance Liguez, University of Texas - Arlington
Panelists: Andrew M. Clark, University of Texas - Arlington; Roger Gans, University of Texas - Arlington; LaDonna Aiken, University of Texas - Arlington; Tom L Ingram, University of Texas - Arlington

Moderator: George Henry Bovenizer, University of South Alabama
Open Paper Competition:
Open 1st Place Paper: Slowly Then Suddenly: Television, Smartphones, and the Normalizing of Sports Gambling in the United States; Gary R. Edgerton, Butler University
Open 2nd Place Paper: Legacy and Impact of the Green Hornet: Generic Criticism Analysis of Comic books, Radio, and Television; Amanda Czuprynski, Regent University

Dorothy L. Sayers’s Metaphors of Meaning; Michael Sinclair, Regent University
Early Sports Broadcasting’s Pioneering Partnership – The Role of Atlantic Refining Company and N. W. Ayer & Son in Developing and Sponsoring Early Sports Broadcasting; Daniel Marshall Haygood, Elon University

News coverage of major events provide signposts to our lives. We look to news coverage to provide context and meaning to extraordinary events. This panel examines events like Chernobyl, the Berlin Wall, the Iranian Revolution the bombing of TWA800, and the American hostage crisis, CNN’s coverage of the Gulf War, and recounting the bombing of TWA 800. Speakers will provide a context and analysis of coverage of the events.
Moderator: Thomas A. Mascaro, Bowling Green State University
Panelists: Boriana Treadwell, University of Miami; Robin Mazyck Sundaramoorthy, University of Maryland; Lydia Reeves Timmins, University of Delaware; James E. Machado, MFA, Millersville University of Pennsylvania

This panel we will examine several major news events of the past 5 decades. In 1989, the world watched as ‘Tank Man’ stopped tanks at Tiananmen Square. Fifty thousand demonstrators gathered at the World Trade Center Conference in Seattle to protest. U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Gifford was shot on a sunny Saturday morning in Tucson. The attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001 held the nation’s attention for years after the attack. Our panelists, several who were involved in the coverage, will reexamine how news organizations provide coverage of breaking news.
Moderator: Fritz J. Messere, SUNY - Oswego
Panelists: Richard Vogel, retired from Culver Stockton College; Nicole Clarity, Hofstra University; Teresa (Terry) Filipowicz, Pima Community College; Nancy L Bartley, Green River College

This panel promises lively debate regarding academe’s role in checking authoritarian assaults on media, based largely on the recent book by Mascaro and the late William E. Porter (Assault on the Media: The Nixon Years, Updated with Analysis of 21st Century Threats to Democracy, 2024). Panelists will update media law & policy, antitrust and regulatory issues, applied history, and the debate over cultural studies as a critique of power.

Moderator: Ralph Beliveau, University of Oklahoma
Amy Sindik, Central Michigan University; Considers a half century of post-Nixon media law, including the Pentagon Papers impact on journalism, modern [secret] prior restraint, confidentiality as a currency of power, and teaching media law amidst attacks on journalism.
Stuart Brotman, University of Tennessee, Knoxville; Assesses antitrust and regulatory issues in terms of helping or hurting the press, the FCC vs. the Office of Telecommunications Policy, and First Amendment freedoms in light of new communication and surveillance technologies.
Tom Mascaro, Bowling Green State University; Proposes “applied history” by journal editors and working groups to take stock of battles between authoritarians and journalism advocacy, as both journalists and college faculty members are under siege.
Ralph Beliveau, University of Oklahoma and Tom Mascaro; Concludes the session by sharing their years-long debate over cultural studies as a “check” on power or an anemic self-serving “critique.” It is no longer enough to “right” or “smart” as academics; it’s time to be more proactive. M

Narratives that broadcast television is in peril have been a part of industry and popular discourse since cable television, VCRS and video games became popular in the 1980s. Yet here we are in 2024, and, despite the deterministic narrative that old television is giving way to new television, broadcast networks not only persist but are a significant part of the streaming television ecosystem. This panel presents the following histories to better understand how network television has shifted its industrial strategies and practices in order to adapt to the digital age.
Moderator: Eleanor Patterson, Auburn University
Stripping Leno at 10 pm: The Challenges of Linear TV Scheduling in an Era of Online Abundance; Noah Arceneaux, San Diego State University
Bridging the Brand: Disney’s Use of Cartoon Blocks to Build their Brand in Broadcast and Extend it into the Digital Age; Kyra Hunting, University of Kentucky
Musical Narration and Memory: The Use of Commercial Music on Twentieth Century Period Pieces on Network Television; Anne Frances MacLennan, York University
From Analog Dollars to Digital Pennies: iTunes, Ad Dollars and Debates over Electronic Sell Through; Eleanor Patterson, Auburn University

The intersection between the musical historical moment and broadcasting or the media marks the time and place in a way that mere paper documents cannot substitute. The structure of feelings that resonates in music gives a sense of the time and place. These papers will explore musical historical television and radio, music festivals, protest music, and music in political and commercial moments.
Moderator: Shaughna Boara, City of Brampton
Branding and Identity with Music in Broadcasting; Anne F. MacLennan, York University
Bringing Home the Mariposa: The Politics, Policies, and Programming of the Canadian Folk Festival, 1961-2000; Christine Cooling York University,
As We Go Marching, Marching…: The Red Berets, Feminist Protest Songs, and the Spreading of Women’s Voices in Canada, 1981-1988; Hailey Baldock, York University
Music as Media Shorthand: From the Fabs to the Swifties, in Culture, Commerce, and Identity: A discussion of how musical signals help to anchor social, political, and commercial moments; Walter J. Podrazik, University of Illinois at Chicago

This panel will explore both the current state-of-the-art technologies such as: writing automation/algorithmic journalism, A.I. image (and moving video) creation, audience analysis/privacy, A.I. integrated into cameras and editing software, and emerging technologies. Panelists explore how these were anticipated in films and TV, books/novels, (from Lang's "Metropolis" to Spike Jones' "Her") and look farther back into history for examples of previous technologies that attempted to do the same. (e.g. the literal 'Mechanical Turk') The panel will also explore how journalism both created and debunked the overhype of these technologies.
Moderator: William Hanff, University of District of Columbia
Panelists: William Hanff, University of the District of Columbia; What’s Old is New, What’s New is Old
The presentation will explore the history of automation (from print typesetting to A.I. chatbots) in broadcasting and media. From this history it will confront the overhype of technology in reporting in the context of technological determinism/media archeology, famous tech news stories (or hoaxes), and the visual representation of automation/technology in TV and Film. It will also include a juxtaposition and exploration of how earlier imagination of technology impacted later designs, and case studies of current A.I. uses in media production and overhype by corporations and investigative journalism in debunking frauds and hype.

MJ Robinson, Brooklyn College/CUNY; Dear AI Autocorrect: I move your son mulch” or “How many Hal 9000’s does it take to change a lightbulb?”
This presentation uses some of the most storied and arguably funny autocorrect fails as a jumping off point for a consideration of how hype about AI’s language processing and learning has always outpaced its actual creative abilities – even and especially with the explosion of generative AI writing apps and the writing about AI writing apps. A historical consideration of the mechanical/computer-aided creative production of the creative industries and role that automata/computers have played in them will follow with a specific focus on the inability of generative AI to generate certain types of content – such as that which relies upon humor, double entendre, wordplay, context, complex metaphor or simile and the implications of this for the culture and media industries.

Nadine El Sayed, The American University in Cairo; n in Science Journalism and Indie Music Production
Science Journalism and Indie Music Production — both are known to have examples of "overhype" and both claim to be 'disrupted' by AI and automation --- and both will probably weather cultural changes pretty well, because of the care and individualization that goes into both well-produced music and well-communicated science research/journalism.