The effects of contextual information on recall and comprehension of television broadcast business news

Introduction
Business news is getting increasingly important in everyday life. As said by Simons: “the business of America is business” (p. 56). Newspapers and television news channels have been pouring resources in their business news section. Both the general newspapers and the broadcast news channels have increased their business news coverage by almost three times in the past two decades. The numbers of business magazines have almost doubled and audience base of CNBC (an exclusive television business news channel) has increased by three times in past one decade.

Television news is the leading source of business news for the Americans (Pew Research, 2000). CNBC attracts 13% of the television viewers (Pew Research, 2002). Yet several researchers have found that comprehension and recall of news broadcast from television is lesser compared to other media like newspaper and magazines. Early studies have found that people typically recall only 1 or 2 stories out of...