Suggests that those who hold the greatest affinity with the television news program, "60 Minutes," watch the program to be entertained while seeking information. (FL)

This investigation considered description, association, and inference regarding television viewing patterns and motivations of aging persons. Among its findings, this study concluded that television--aside from its important role in disseminating information and entertainment--also functions to occupy idle time and to fill a companionship vacuum…

Examines the relationships between child and adolescent television use motivations and various sociodemographic characteristics, television viewing levels, program preference, and television attitudes. Viewing motivations include learning, passing time, companionship, escape, arousal, and relaxation. Discusses implications within the conceptual…

Explores the psychological origins of media gratification by examining how pertinent psychological variables help explain television viewing motivation. Finds that parasocial interaction, anxiety, creativity, sensation seeking's disinhibition dimension, and television affinity and exposure, helped to predict viewing motivation. (PRA)

Compares television use among older adults in contexts of interpersonal communication, social interaction, and psychological confinement and nonconfinement. Findings indicate that environmental context is more influential than chronological age in determining viewing motivations, program preferences, and viewing behaviors. (Author/MER)

Examination of the relationship between viewing motivation and viewing patterns among young adult television viewers identifies nine motivational categories: relaxation, companionship, habit, time passing, entertainment, social interaction, information, arousal, and escape. Two basic types of television use are described as time consumption and…

Identifies nine motivations for television viewing and relates these to age, viewing levels, television attitudes of attachment and reality, and program preferences. Implications of the results are discussed in terms of uses and gratifications research perspectives. (JMF)

Data from 464 adults were analyzed to provide a more heuristic paradigm for mass communication uses and gratifications research in a study of the interactive nature of television viewing motivations, viewing behavior, and attitude gratifications. Factor analysis located five principal television viewing motivations: passing time, information,…

Describes two studies that examined how chronic loneliness influenced local news and soap opera viewing by nontraditional and traditional college students. The relationships between loneliness, media use, and interpersonal interaction are discussed, and discriminant analyses are presented that examined viewers' motives, attitudes, and activities…

This study of U.S. college students' soap opera viewing habits investigated their motives; interrelationships among motives, audience viewing dispositions, and life patterns; whether viewing dispositions and life pattern variables explain viewing motives; and what multivariate structures explain relationships between viewing motives, viewing…