Fall 2002

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Global media expert Sylvia Chan-Olmsted tapped as UF Research Foundation prof

Sylvia Chan-Olmsted with her children's art work (Photo by John Freeman)

by David Payne

Dr. Sylvia Chan-Olmsted, associate professor of telecommunication, has been named a University of Florida Research Foundation Professor for 2002-05.

The award recognized Chan-Olmsted’s research on media economics, telecommunication management and marketing and strategic competition and new media.

With this award, Chan-Olmsted will receive salary supplements of $5,000 for three years and a one-time award of $3,000.

“The money for my research will be nice for the little things, like ink cartridges,” she said while laughing. “At least if you’re going to show things in a focus group, you can print them in color.”

The professorships are funded from royalties and fees on intellectual property, on retained indirect costs from corporate contracts and grants and from investment income. Recipients must be tenured associate or full professors of five years with a distinguished record.

Chan-Olmsted said she will continue her research on digital TV, which involves how consumers perceive the new form of broadcast and will also study its managerial implications.

She will study how much consumers actually know about digital TV, how much they are willing to pay for it and what they think about it in general.

She’ll also research “global media conglomerization”—the merging and consolidating of companies.

“It’s fundamental to understand how the entire media mechanism functions because we are in a free market place,” she said. “It’s also a very important academic function to study how media decisions are made.”

Chan-Olmsted said companies that grow too large could end up not being able to compete with smaller companies.

“Sometimes companies get too big and can’t respond fast enough to changing technologies,” she said. “Companies get big and always end up breaking down to smaller pieces again.”

Chan-Olmsted said she is also very excited about writing a book on strategic management, branding and conglomerization in the age of digital media.

“The book will be a collection of work that addresses the strategic competition aspect of the electronic media industries as they respond to the arrival of new technologies,” she said.

This fall Chan-Olmsted is teaching two graduate-level courses. One is in brand management and the other is audience analysis. She said that students in the latter class are helping her plan a focus group for her digital TV research.

Chan-Olmsted earned her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees at Michigan State University, specializing in telecommunication management and media economics, respectively.

She joined the UF faculty in 1997.

She was nominated for the professorship by her department chair and Dean Terry Hynes.