Eastman, Susan Tyler 1939-

PERSONAL:

Born September 3, 1939, in Tacoma, WA; daughter of William Thoms and Dorothy Evelyn Dowell; married Robert Clark Tyler (divorced, 1970). Education: University of California, Berkeley, B.A., 1982; San Francisco State University, M.A., 1973; Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, Ph.D., 1977. Politics: Democrat.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Telecommunications, Radio-TV 240, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47405. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, media consultant, and educator. Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, OH, instructor and fellow, 1974-77; Temple University, Philadelphia, PA, assistant professor, 1977-81; Indiana University, Bloomington, associate professor, 1981-97, professor, Department of Telecommunications, 1997- 2003, professor emerita, 2003—. Licensed elementary school teacher in CA and has taught in schools in San Francisco and Richmond, CA.

MEMBER:

Broadcast Education Association (chair, curriculum division, 1984-86; chair, research division, 1982-84; communication coordinator, 1990-91), International Communication Association (chair, communication and technology division, 1990-91), Speech Communication Association (division chair, mass communication, 1990-91), AAUP (chapter president, 1991-92).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Lilly Linkage Grant, Lilly Endowment, 1983-84; Indiana Department of Education Grant, 1987-89; Distinguished Scholar Award, Broadcast Education Association, 2006.

WRITINGS:

(With Sydney W. Head and Lewis Klein) Broadcast Programming: Strategies for Winning Television and Radio Audiences, Wadsworth Publishing (Belmont, CA), 1981.

(Editor, with Robert A. Klein) Strategies in Broadcast and Cable Promotion: Commercial Television, Radio, Cable, Pay-Television, Public Television, Wadsworth Publishing (Belmont, CA), 1982.

(With Sydney W. Head and Lewis Klein) Broadcast/ Cable Programming: Strategies and Practices, Wadsworth Publishing (Belmont, CA), 1985, 7th edition published as Media Programming: Strategies and Practices, Wadsworth/Thomson Learning (Belmont, CA), 2005.

(Editor, with Robert A. Klein) Promotion & Marketing for Broadcast & Cable, 2nd edition, Waveland Press (Prospect Heights, IL), 1991, 5th edition published as Media Promotion and Marketing for Broadcasting, Cable, and the Internet (with Douglas A. Ferguson and Robert A. Klein), Elsevier/ Focal Press (Boston, MA), 2006.

(Editor) Research in Media Promotion, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates (Mahwah, NJ), 2000.

Member of editorial board of Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media.

SIDELIGHTS:

Author and educator Susan Tyler Eastman is a professor emerita of telecommunications. Much of her work focuses on television programming in various media, including broadcast, cable, and the World Wide Web, and how programming choices are made in order to capture the widest possible audience of viewers. Conversely, she also looks at how viewers of television and related programming strive to "maintain control over their own use of the electronic media," she stated on the Indiana University Department of Telecommunications Web site.

In Media Programming: Strategies and Practices, the 7th edition of a long-running textbook series on television and media programming strategies and practices, Eastman and coauthor Douglas A. Ferguson look closely at issues such as where entertainment programs come from, the multiple factors that affect the audience size of a particular program or series, the economics of television programming, and the regulatory environment in which programs are conceived, created, and provided to an audience. The authors also discuss the influence of minority audiences and the increasing prevalence and availability of international programming.

Eastman edited Research in Media Promotion, a volume that collects a number of academic works and trade press articles on media promotion. Eastman herself offers an introductory chapter on media promotion and associated research. The remaining ten chapters cover a variety of topics, including application of scholarly theory to the practice of promotion; the advantages and pitfalls of using sex and violence in promotion; television branding; promoting children's programming; and the promotion of staple fare such as movies, news, and sports. Eastman also includes material on the promotion of radio programming and on the relatively new world of online and web-based programming.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Communication Research Trends, spring, 2000, review of Research in Media Promotion, p. 132.

Reference & Research Book News, August, 2005, review of Media Programming: Strategies and Practices, 7th edition.

ONLINE

Indiana University Department of Telecommunications Web site, http://www.indiana.edu/??telecom/ (September 23, 2006), biography of Susan Tyler Eastman.