Bogart, Leo 1921–2005

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Bogart, Leo 1921–2005

PERSONAL: Born September 23, 1921, in Lvov, Poland; came to the United States, c. 1923; died of babesiosis, October 5, 2005, in New York, NY; son of Jacob (a jurist) and Rachel (Blum) Bogart; married Agnes Cohen, August 8, 1948; children: Michele, Gregory. Education: Brooklyn College (now Brooklyn College of the City University of New York), B.A., 1941; University of Chicago, M.A., 1948, Ph.D., 1950.

CAREER: Standard Oil Company of New Jersey, New York, NY, opinion and communications research specialist, 1948–51; McCann-Erickson, Inc., New York, NY, vice-president of market planning division, 1952–58; Revlon, Inc., New York, NY, director of market research, 1958–60; Newspaper Advertising Bureau (became Newspaper Association of America), New York, NY, vice-president of market planning and research, 1960–66, executive vice-president and general manager, 1966–89; Innovation International Media Consulting Group, Detroit, MI, director and senior consultant. Lecturer, Columbia University, 1953–60; adjunct professor, New York University; 1990–92; senior fellow, Center for Media Studies, Columbia University; instructor, Illinois Institute of Technology. Member of judging panel, James K. Batten Knight Ridder Excellence Awards. Military service: U.S. Army Signal Intelligence Corps, 1942–46.

MEMBER: World Association for Public Opinion Research (president, 1965–66), International Newspaper Advertising Executives (honorary life member), American Association for Public Opinion Research (president, 1966–67), American Psychological Association (fellow; president, consumer psychological division, 1971–72), American Sociological Association (fellow), Market Research Council (president, 1965–66), Radio-Television Research Council, American Marketing Association; American Advertising Federation, Advertising Research Foundation, Society for Consumer Psychology (president), Center for Applied Linguistics.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fulbright fellow, Institute National d'É Demographiques, 1951–52; Goldish Award of International Newspaper Promotion Association, 1966; Media/Scope medals, 1967 and 1969; award from American Association for Public Opinion Research, 1977; Market Research Council first achievement award, 1978; American Marketing Association attitude research first achievement award, 1982; International Circulation Managers Association achievement award, 1982; elected to Market Research Council Hall of Fame; Gannett Center for Media Studies, senior fellow; awards from American Society of Newspaper Editors, International Circulation Managers Association, International Newspaper Promotion Association, and Newspaper Research Council.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

Age of Television, Ungar (New York, NY), 1956, revised edition, 1972.

Strategy in Advertising, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1968, 3rd edition published as Strategy in Advertising: Matching Media and Messages to Markets and Motivations, NTC Business Books (Lincolnwood, IL), 1996.

(Editor) Project Clear: Social Research and the Desegregation of the United States Army, Markham (Chicago, IL), 1969, new edition with introduction by Bogart, Transaction Publishers (New Brunswick, NJ), 1992.

(Editor) Current Controversies in Marketing Research, Markham (Chicago, IL), 1969.

Silent Politics: Polls and the Awareness of Public Opinion, Wiley (New York, NY), 1972, revised edition, Transaction/Society (New Brunswick, NJ), 1985.

Premises for Propaganda: The Cold War Operating Assumptions of the U.S. Information Agency, Free Press (New York, NY), 1976 revised edition, abridged by Agnes Bogart, published as Cool Words, Cold War: A New Look at USIA's Premises for Propaganda, American University Press (Lanham, MD), 1995.

Press and Public: Who Reads What, Where, When and Why in American Newspapers, Lawrence Erlbaum (Hillsdale, NJ), 1981.

Preserving the Press: How Daily Newspapers Mobilized to Keep Their Readers, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1991.

Commercial Culture: The Media System and the Public Interest, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 1995.

Finding Out: Personal Adventures in Social Research—Discovering What People Think, Say and Do, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 2003.

How I Earned the Ruptured Duck: From Brooklyn to Berchtesgaden in World War II, Texas A & M University Press (College Station, TX), 2004.

Over the Edge: How the Pursuit of Youth by Marketers and the Media Has Changed American Culture, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 2005.

Contributor of more than one hundred articles to journals in his field. Columnist for Presstime.

SIDELIGHTS: Leo Bogart was a sociologist and marketing specialist whose numerous books shed light on the techniques and effects of modern advertising and media. His book Commercial Culture: The Media System and the Public Interest, published in 1995, was, Joseph Turow commented in Public Opinion Quarterly, "a useful compendium of issues and examples that range across the media system. Leo Bogart reminds again that there is much to do to make the system better—and that it is getting increasingly hard to do it."

Bogart strongly believed that media should not be driven solely by market forces. His book Over the Edge: How the Pursuit of Youth by Marketers and the Media Has Changed American Culture examines the changes brought about in popular culture by marketing and media during the twentieth century. Bogart found that in attempting to attract consumers in the under-35 age group, producers of television, movies, music, video games, and other mass media continually resort to needless use of sexual and violent content. Bogart challenges the ideas behind these marketing decisions and looks at ways the media could regulate its content. In the end, he stated, the producers themselves are responsible for the content of their work, and only a voluntary return to higher standards of decency by producers will effectively address the issue. According to a Kirkus Reviews writer, Over the Edge is "an educational, accessible diatribe grounded in decades of accumulated knowledge, and certainly well-intended."

Bogart's long career brought him in contact with many of the most influential people of his day. His book Finding Out: Personal Adventures in Social Research—Discovering What People Think, Say, and Do recounts his many accomplishments, provides vignettes of many powerful players in the worlds of advertising and commerce, and also offers his analysis of market research and its effects. Noting the personal perspective, B. Stuart Tolley stated in the Journal of Advertis-ing Research: "If impersonal social science is your meat and potatoes, this is not your book. Instead, Bogart presents that which he knows best—his own work—from which he draws the necessary conclusions." A Booklist reviewer found that the personal approach lends "a depth of perspective not typically found in a dry research report," while a Reason contributor, Brian Doherty, similarly remarked that the author's "details are frequently funny and charming, and add humanity to a potentially dull topic."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Bogart, Leo, Finding Out: Personal Adventures in Social Research—Discovering What People Think, Say and Do, Ivan R. Dee (Chicago, IL), 2003.

Bogart, Leo, How I Earned the Ruptured Duck: From Brooklyn to Berchtesgaden in World War II, Texas A & M University Press (College Station, TX), 2004.

PERIODICALS

America, July 4, 2005, Andrew M. Greeley, review of Over the Edge: How the Pursuit of Youth by Marketers and the Media Has Changed American Culture, p. 25.

Booklist, December 1, 1994, Aaron Cohen, review of Commercial Culture: The Media System and the Public Interest, p. 637; December 15, 2002, Vanessa Bush, review of Finding Out: Personal Adventures in Social Research—Discovering What People Think, Say, and Do, p. 711.

Editor & Publisher, August 31, 1991, Hiley Ward, review of Preserving the Press: How Daily Newspapers Mobilized to Keep Their Readers, p. 23.

Journal of Advertising Research, March, 2003, B. Stuart Tolley, review of Finding Out, p. 130.

Kirkus Reviews, January 15, 2005, review of Over the Edge, p. 94.

Public Opinion Quarterly, summer, 2001, Joseph Turow, review of Commercial Culture, p. 292; winter, 2004, Murray Edelman, review of Finding Out, p. 648.

Quill, September, 1992, interview with Leo Bogart, p. 39.

Reason, May, 2003, Brian Doherty, review of Finding Out, p. 52.

Variety, May 2, 2005, Ben Fritz, review of Over the Edge, p. 72.

Weekly Standard, June 27, 2005, Kelly Jane Torrance, review of Over the Edge, p. 39.