Reports on a study in which content analysis of a community newspaper and open-ended questioning of residents were used to analyze the newspaper's influence on the local information the public has and the topics the public considers salient over time. (GW)

A study of 150 residents of a small southern Illinois city suggests that there are significant correlations between local daily newspaper content and what people in the community report reading and talking about, but that there are only nonsignificant partial correlations between the newspaper's and the residents' agendas about local news. (GW)

Among the findings of a study of the television viewing preferences of prison inmates were that inmates convicted of aggressive assault preferred family drama programs, that those convicted of aggravated robbery preferred ethnic comedy, and that all inmate subgroups were inclined toward crime and action programs. (GW)

Concludes that "key visuals" (single frames of artwork storyboards or finished television commercials that sum up the creative strategy of the whole commercial) can be used to pretest the interest levels of viewers in television commercials. (GT)

Reports on a study that indicated that the order in which news stories are presented during television newscasts may not be a crucial factor with respect to viewer retention and interest. (GW)

Concludes that people selectively attend to campaign information based on its editorial format rather than its orignating format and that a surveillance/vote guidance motivation to attend to a campaign is more strongly related to degree of selectivity than is a diversion motivation. (FL)

Describes a study that investigated whether the introduction of cable television in a community would lead to greater interest maximization and increase the gap between low and high socioeconomic groups' viewing of news and public affairs programs. (GW)