Hotelling Locational Problems with Directional Constraints: An Application to Television News Scheduling

Ted Bergstrom, University of California, Santa Barbara
Maria Cancian, University of Wisconsin
Angela Bills

Abstract

If viewers prefer to watch television as soon as they get home from work, how should competing television stations schedule their news programs so as to maximize the number of viewers? This is a Hotelling locational problem with a directional constraint. Viewers can watch the news after, but not before, they get home from work. We show that in this situation there does not exist a pure strategy Nash equilibrium.