In the age of smartphones and SnapChat, do TV ads still translate into votes? The benefits of delaying kindergarten, this week's new music picks.
Brace yourselves: Presidential campaign ads are coming
Sen. Bernie Sanders airs his first campaign ads Tuesday. The spots will target voters in Iowa and New Hampshire — the first and second states to vote in the presidential primary.
The Sanders campaign is running a little behind, however. Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton started airing her campaign message in the key nominating states three months ago.
Candidates will shell out millions in the coming months to take their messages directly to voters, but in the age of smartphones and Snapchat, do TV ads still translate into votes?
Take Two evaluated the effectiveness of several campaign ads from past elections with UCLA political science and communications studies professor Lynn Vavreck.
Who doesn’t like Ike?
Citizens for Eisenhower shelled out the money to bring Americans catchy jingle during the 1956 presidential race. Eisenhower, the incumbent, would go on to beat Democrat Adlai Stevenson for a second time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DF9PsMDjc8g
Vavreck tells Take Two that Eisenhower’s approach was effective because he was a unique candidate.
“Eisenhower … everybody pretty much knew him, so he’s celebrating himself,” Vavreck says. “Someone’s banging a drum, kids, parents, workers, dogs, and cats are all marching to Washington. And so it’s a celebration of who Eisenhower was, and it’s a way of introducing him.”
Verdict: Effective
Liberating Europe may have also helped.
Celebrity
During the 2008 election, Sen. John McCain funded an attack ad on then-Sen. Barack Obama, critical of his qualifications and comparing him to celebrities.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHXYsw_ZDXg
Vavreck says the McCain campaign's goal was to make viewers question Obama's ability to lead.
“In the beginning, people hear snapshots of the paparazzi, who are taking pictures of celebrities, in this case it’s Paris Hilton and Britney Spears,” she says. “The suggestion is that those people are famous for being famous, and that Barack Obama seems to think that he should be famous just for being himself and being famous.”
Verdict: Not effective enough
Press the play button above to hear more about the role political ads play in a presidential campaign.
More VW engines found to have emissions cheat
Two months ago, Volkswagen admitted it had used a sophisticated trick to fool emissions tests on vehicles powered by its four-cylinder diesel engine.
Now, the EPA says VW used a similar scheme to end-run testing of their larger, six-cylinder diesel. It powers luxury models such as the Porsche Cayenne and the Audi Q5.
Our car critic,
of the OC Register, has all the details, including what to expect if you own one of the emission-cheating diesel models.
Adopting neuroscience for political campaigns
A technique called neuromarketing is increasingly being used by political campaigns around the world to enable them to target voters with precision.
Instead of traditional focus groups, researchers gather physical data like facial expressions, brain activity and physiological changes to create marketing materials precisely crafted to individual voters' interests and preferences.
Neuromarketing is currrently being used in political campaigns in Mexico, Turkey, Poland and Colombia, among others.
But its use is limited in the US... For now.
Kevin Randall from the New York Times explained its growing use to A Martinez.
To listen to the segment, click on the audio above.
The Brood: Could your child benefit from starting kindergarten later?
It's a tricky question— is your child ready for kindergarten? Or not?
Five years ago, a California law gradually changed the cutoff birthdate for entry to kindergarten so that by 2014 all California kids would be at least 5 years old when they began kindergarten.
Before that, kids in California had been starting kindergarten earlier than children in most other states, some before they really had all the necessarily skills to succeed.
Now a new study out of Stanford finds strong evidence that enrolling children in kindergarten even later— at age 6 or even age 7, rather than at age 5— can result in dramatic mental health benefits.
Southern California Public Radio's Deepa Fernandes has been looking into the study and joined Take Two to discuss.
To hear the full interview, click the link above.
Tuesday Reviewsday: Fiction Plane, Bob Dylan and more
Tuesday always means it's time for Tuesday Reviewsday, our weekly new music segment.
This week,
, news director at Billboard Magazine, and music journalist
join host Alex Cohen in the studio.
Halperin's first offering is from the band Fiction Plane and their new album, Mondo Lumina (release date: Nov. 13). The band features frontman Joe Sumner, the son of Sting!
She says that while their first album came out in 2003, they never quite took off in the U.S. On this album you find a band that’s found its stride. And yes, it nods to the Police, but also to bands that skirt the like between modern rock and pop, like Jimmy Eat World, and their contemporaries in England like The Verve.
Martins brings us new music from the band Sports. It's a 4-5 piece basement rock band, started in 2012 at Kenyon College in Gambier, Ohio. They playfully call their genre "sock-core," or "sockwave" ... a joke on their style of soft/emotional band playing music owing entirely to punk and power-pop. The Get Up Kids is a great reference, maybe early Saves the Day, and also current stuff like Waxahatchee and Swearin'.
Next Halperin talks about the 12th edition of the Bob Dylan bootleg series, which is a collection that aims to contextualize his recording career in a different way through recordings of alternate takes, rehearsals and live performances. Here we have the original version of the song, Subterranean Homesick Blues.
This particular volume, which spans his work in 1965 to 1966 and is packaged as a six-CD set (there’s also an 18-disc version that includes every note recorded during those session), covers perhaps Dylan’s most creative and prolific period and some might even say his best.
In 18 months, he recorded three seminal albums: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde (a double album) marking a transition and evolution from recording in New York to Nashville.
The final selection comes from Martins and the mysterious Lazyboy Empire.
He describes it as a super-catchy, fairly viral tropical-pop gem from a mystery artist. We know it was produced by burgeoning Los Angeles hit-maker Ricky Reed, but no one knows who else is involved.
Shirley Halperin is a news director at Billboard Magazine and Chris Martins is a music journalist living in Los Angeles. Be sure to check out past Tuesday Reviewsday segments here.
Could development at SF's AT&T Park spark projects at Dodger Stadium?
The area around San Francisco's AT&T Park could become a vibrant neighborhood with homes, shops, parks and more.
Voters there take on a proposal Tuesday that would spur denser development of the nearby land. Supporters envision it will be a little like Chicago's Wrigleyville.
"The Giants have been able to accomplish something that really is pretty amazing: there's no one opposing this," says Bill Shaikin, the LA Times' national baseball reporter.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, there have been similar plans for the land around Dodger Stadium, But every attempt to do it has struck out.
"You'd have to convince neighbors who are already not too excited that people come driving through their neighborhoods for 81 games a year that development is going to bring people to their neighborhoods 365 days a year – and it's going to be a good thing," says Shaikin.
He says that the Giants spent eight years working with local lawmakers and community leaders to slowly get everyone on board.
They also emphasized that the ballot measure was not about improving the experience for sports fans: ads in support talked about the 40 percent of affordable housing units that would be created in the development.
In Los Angeles, Shaikin says there are a lot of political hurdles that have stopped projects and will continue to hobble future one.
For example, the area around Dodger stadium is currently zoned for agricultural or open space, so there would be a drawn out hearing on zoning and planning.
The Dodgers also have to make a push for development when their public stock is at a all-time high in the community.
"That could be when you win the World Series," he says. "You still can't see the Dodgers on TV, for example, and I wouldn't dare try to float any development proposal if I were the owners until I resolve that."
Whole Foods is nervously eyeing rivals
You may not know it when you're hustling through your local Whole Foods store, but in terms of its stock price, the popular grocery chain isn't doing so well.
It still has pretty healthy profits, but its shares are almost 50 percent lower than they were in February.
Wall Street analysts are concerned about mainstream grocery chains like Costco and Walmart aggressively moving into their traditional domain, and recent bad press about overcharging.
The company's quarterly earnings report is out Wednesday, and the company's forecasting a small slowdown in growth to 6 percent, from 7 to 8 percent.
Stephanie Strom, business reporter from the New York Times, laid out the company's woes to host A Martinez.
You can listen to the segment by clicking on the blue audio player above.
'Water: Our Thirsty World' displays global challenges of H2O
While California's drought drags on, a new show at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach puts the need for water in a global perspective.
"Water: Our Thirsty World" features the works of photographers from National Geographic magazine.
Host Alex Cohen recently caught up with Jerry Schubel, president and CEO of Aquarium of the Pacific, for a look at the exhibition.
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue audio player above.
Crab fishermen wait for toxic algae bloom to clear
A toxic algae bloom appeared along the West Coast this spring. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said that it may be the largest ever recorded, as it stretched from California to Alaska and was as deep as 650 feet.
Even more concerning was the effect that its toxins were having on the Dungeness Crab, a popular animal that fishermen gathered. With this week marking the beginning of crab fishing season in California, Vera Trainer, a research oceanographer with NOAA’s Northwest Fisheries Science Center, spoke to host A Martinez about the current status of the algae’s effect on local crab-life.
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue audio player above.
West Nile Virus infection numbers continue to rise
Twenty-eight people have died of West Nile Virus and more than 400 others have reportedly been infected in multiple California counties this year.
Robert Cummings, director of Scientific Technical Services at the Orange County Vector Control District, says that the culprit is local house mosquitoes that have carried the virus from birds to humans.
To listen to the full interview, click on the blue audio player above.