Reaching Audiences: Exploring Opportunities in Hispanic Media and Market Research

Robert Affe is senior lecturer in the Department of Telecommunications and adjunct senior lecturer for the International Studies Program at Indiana University, Bloomington. His courses focus on media management, negotiations, and international relations. He currently is researching for a book that explores the dynamic relationship between the evolution of free economic markets and their impact upon national sovereignty.

Affe has 30 years of experience in the media business, particularly in legal, management, programming, news and syndication. During the 1980s and 1990s, he was a communications attorney in Washington, D.C., and subsequently he was an executive in the television station industry. Affe helped build independent stations in five of top 25 markets: Chicago, Dallas, Cleveland, Tampa, and Hartford-New Haven.

On a pro bono basis, Affe was a multi-year participant in a series of immersive training practica for media professionals, mostly managers and journalists – from developing countries whose political and economic systems were re-orienting themselves to a Western media business model. The countries identified were Lithuania, Hungary, Romania, Guyana and India.

Recently, Affe started his own international development program for media professionals and students in China. He has developed a program of private media consultation and academic courses in advertising, international marketing, and telecommunications policy. The program involved several leading universities.

Through his consulting work, he has met with Chinese policy makers, industry representatives, and academic officials. He was one of the first Americans to receive an appointment to teach at Peking University's School of Journalism in Summer 2006.

He is a graduate of Georgetown University and the New York University School of Law.

← Return to Panelist Overview