Cynthia Meyers to Be Honored by Library of American Broadcasting Foundation
3/22/2016
Riverdale, N.Y. – The Library of American Broadcasting Foundation (LABF) announced Cynthia B. Meyers, Associate Professor of Communication at the University of Mount Saint Vincent, as the winner of its 2016 Broadcast Historian Award for her book, A Word from Our Sponsor: Admen, Advertising, and the Golden Age of Radio, which provides a detailed analysis of the formative role the advertising industry played in constructing U.S. network broadcasting.
Dr. Meyers will be awarded a $5,000 check from the LABF at the Broadcast Education Association’s annual convention in Las Vegas on Monday, April 18, 2016. Her award will be presented by Ginny Morris, Chair and Chief Executive Officer of Hubbard Radio, and current chair of the LABF; Joyce Tudryn, President and Chief Executive Officer of the IRTS (International Radio and Television Society) Foundation, and also a LABF board member; and W. Lawrence Patrick, Managing Partner of both Patrick Communications and Legend Communications. After receiving her award, she will present a session featuring her book, A Word from Our Sponsor, focused on the formative role the advertising industry played in constructing U.S. network broadcasting.
The LABF is the national information resource serving the radio and television industries, as well as the academic community. Its collections of historic documents, professional papers, oral and video histories, books, scripts, and photographs are the nation’s most extensive. Dr. Meyers will be donating a copy of her book to the archives.
Dr. Meyers received her Ph.D. in Radio-Television-Film from the University of Texas at Austin. Her achievements, presentations, and publications continue to expand across the television and advertising industries. Recently, she served as a member of a screening committee for the Peabody Awards; she was a faculty fellow for the International Radio and Television Society at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas; and she attended and presented at the Radio Preservation Task Force conference at the Library of Congress, where she served as director and chair of the Metadata Committee.
In April she will present, “Blacklisting as an Advertising Strategy: J. Walter Thompson, Television Sponsors, and Anticommunist Activists, 1951-55,” at the Society of Cinema and Media Studies in Atlanta, where she will discuss archival evidence of the blacklisting practices at a major advertising agency for its client Kraft and their television program, Kraft Television Theater.
Additionally, Dr. Meyers’ recent publications include her piece, “In TV’s Shifting Landscape, Advertisers Scramble to Adapt,” published by The Conversation, on March 21, 2016. Upcoming publications include her article, “Advertising, the Red Scare, and the Blacklist: BBDO, US Steel, and Theatre Guild on the Air, 1945-52,” in Cinema Journal, highlighting archival evidence analyzing how a major advertising agency urged its client, U.S. Steel, to impose blacklisting on its radio program produced by a prestigious New York theater group; her piece, “When Worlds Collide: Sharing Historical Advertising Research on Tumblr,” in The Arclight Guide to Media History and the Digital Humanities, which discusses what she has learned about providing historical advertising images on her Tumblr; and the chapter, “The Best Thing on TV: 1960s US Television Commercials,” in Films that Sell: Moving Pictures and Advertising, that summarizes her current research on how television and advertising radically changed in the 1960s.
About the University of Mount Saint Vincent
Founded in 1847 by the Sisters of Charity, the University of Mount Saint Vincent offers nationally recognized liberal arts education and a select array of professional fields of study on a landmark campus overlooking the Hudson River. Committed to the education of the whole person, and enriched by the unparalleled cultural, educational and career opportunities of New York City, the College equips students with the knowledge, skills and experiences necessary for lives of achievement, professional accomplishment and leadership in the 21st century.