David Roberts, a clinical-psychology student at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, had a summer job teaching social skills to a group of schizophrenic patients at a state hospital.

He had a particularly unresponsive group (“Many patients are flattened by their meds,” he explained recently) and tried in vain to interest them in role-playing everyday social situations, offering the patients rewards of points and tokens in return for not giving in to their urges to wander around, respond to phantom voices, or otherwise become disruptive—a traditional system of behavioral therapy.

During a break one day, Roberts, watching television in the hospital’s lounge, noticed that a change had come over his patients, who generally seemed immune to basic social signals. “They were laughing at the ironic commercials,” he said. “They were laughing at ‘Friends.’ They were laughing at all the places I was laughing.” Many showed a fluency in the kinds of social communication that Roberts had been struggling to teach them in therapy.

“We watched a scene from ‘Monk’ where Tony Shalhoub won’t shake hands with anyone for fear of germs, and walks away awkwardly. I asked a man who’d been an inpatient for ten years, and who was generally blank, what had happened, and he shook his head and gave me a wry grin. Unspoken communication is huge for someone like that.”

So Roberts began showing TV clips during therapy sessions. Soon he had narrowed his selections down to one show: television’s purest expression of social dysfunction, “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Roberts considers Larry David to be the perfect proxy for a schizophrenic person. “On his way into his dentist’s office, he holds the door open for a woman, and, as a result, she’s seen first,” he said. “He stews, he fumes, he explodes. He’s breaking the social rules that folks with schizophrenia often break.”


He went on, “Or the one where Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen invite Larry and his wife to a concert: the night arrives, they don’t call, Larry assumes they don’t like him, then it turns out he got the date wrong. It’s a classic example of a major social cognitive error—jumping to conclusions—that schizophrenic patients are prone to.” As the patients watched David flub situation after situation, they laughed, and they willingly discussed with Roberts how they might behave in the same circumstances. “That bald man made a mountain out of a molehill!” one woman called out during a session.

Roberts and his U.N.C. adviser, David Penn, began to formalize these findings, mapping out a teachable technique called Social Cognition and Interaction Training. They tested SCIT in four preliminary studies, and in post-training evaluations patients showed significant improvement in deciphering social situations. The technique has attracted attention—practitioners in Germany, Portugal, and China are now watching TV with their patients—and this fall Penn and a third researcher are conducting a randomized control trial funded by the National Institute of Mental Health.

Larry David said that he hadn’t realized how deeply the awkwardness on his show would affect people. “It just deals with how you’re supposed to behave,” he said. “A lot of the time, it’s just me expressing myself freely. I knew that my own mental health was problematic, but should I be worried? I mean, I blow up, too! Is this something undiagnosed? Do I need to see a clinical psychologist?” 

Americans may choose to consume video on the “best screen available,” yet traditional TV remains the screen of choice. The recent results of Nielsen’s Three Screen Report a quarterly analysis from Nielsen’s Anywhere Anytime Media

The measurement initiative (A2/M2) shows that the average American watches approximately 153 hours of TV every month at home, a 1.2% increase from last year. In addition, the 131 million Americans who watch video on the Internet watch on average about 3 hours of video online each month at home and work. The 13.4 million Americans who watch video on mobile phones watch on average about 3 ½ hours of mobile video each month.

In addition, Nielsen data shows that consumers’ time with TV, Internet and Mobile video continues to increase across the board. Online video grew 13% in Q1 2009, driven by both strong brand marketing and large media events including the Presidential inauguration, the Super Bowl and March Madness. With broadband levels increasing in the U.S., online video audiences will continue to grow as consumers begin to upgrade their PCs to support increased video consumption.

Mobile video viewing has grown a significant 52% from the previous year, up to 13.4 million Americans. Much of this growth continues to come from increased mobile content and the rise of the mobile web as a viewing option.

Out of all different age groups, 18-24 year olds show signs of watching DVR and online video the same amount of time timeshifting 5 hrs, 47 minutes per month, and watching video online 5 hrs, 3 minutes each month.

Perhaps the merging of web and TV will begin to drive the growth of true interactive TV with Google leading the way.

With its eye on the burgeoning mobile advertising market, Internet giant Google said Monday that it will buy the AdMob mobile advertising network for $750 million in stock.

San Mateo, California based AdMob places ads for clients such as Ford Motor, Coca-Cola and Procter & Gamble on many mobile phone platforms – most notably the iPhone.

Google, which is pushing aggressively into the mobile market via its Android mobile phone operating system, popularized online advertising with pay-per-click search ads. The company says AdMob will bring more mobile choices for its advertisers.

"We believe that great mobile advertising products can encourage even more growth in the mobile ecosystem," Google said in a blog post announcing the deal.

AdMob focuses on display ads on mobile Web browsers and advertising within apps on smartphones.

The mobile advertising market is in its infancy. Forrester Research estimates revenue at $391 million for 2009 and projects growth to $1.2 billion by 2014.

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Could the "Queen of Daytime Television" be leaving her throne?

Rumors are rampant that Oprah Winfrey may move her syndicated talk show to her own Network. I believe this could rock television.

It all began with an Internet report that has the TV world buzzing that Winfrey may move her show to cable instead of keeping it on broadcast television.

But if the deal goes through, what does this mean for the stations who depend on the talk show titan for ratings?

It's nearly decision time for Winfrey. By year's-end, she's expected to announce whether she's leaving her network perch and moving to cable, to her very own network, aptly named "OWN," the Oprah Winfrey Network.

Influential Hollywood blogger Nikki Finke says Winfrey will move her show to OWN by 2011.

Winfrey is viewed by over 6 million people daily, and is the No. 1-rated daytime talk show. When her contract expires in two years, she will have headlined her own show for a quarter of a century. Without her, many stations would lose their biggest daytime draw.

"Her loyal viewers are likely to move with her. It would have a negative impact, obviously, on the networks that currently air her show," said Matthew Beloni of The Hollywood Reporter.

Winfrey's production company, Harpo, denies rumors that a decision has been made, saying, "She will be making an announcement before the end of the year." Meanwhile, the OWN network has reportedly been struggling for two years to get organized. Moving her show would clearly give the startup the visability it needs.

"Putting a big draw like Oprah Winfrey's talk show on a network would be a huge step for any fledging network. Any network would love to have that," Belloni added.

Winfrey's deal with CBS Productions expires in 2011.

OWN, Ther Oprah Winfrey Network, was actually slated to start right about now, but there have been lots of management delays, so it hasn't live yet