In 1966, Joan Ganz Cooney was a documentary producer at Channel 13 when Lloyd Morrisett, then Vice President at the Carnegie Corporation of New York, offered her an opportunity that would change the landscape of children's media forever. The Carnegie Corporation provided funding for a three-month study during which Joan traveled the country to…

Children's television programming frequently uses interactive characters that appear to directly engage the viewers. These characters encourage children to answer questions and perform actions to help the characters solve problems in the televised world. Children readily engage in these interactions; however, it is unclear why they do so. To…

This study described the relations among the amount of child-directed versus adult-directed television exposure at ages 1 and 4 with cognitive outcomes at age 4. Sixty parents completed 24-hour television diaries when their children were 1 and 4 years of age. At age 4, their children also completed a series of cognitive measures and parents…

This study was conducted on-site in Istanbul, Turkey, to determine the effects that mass media has on citizens' perceptions about fear of crime, in particular, and fear, in general. Specifically, the study was designed to (1) determine the tendency of citizens' media consumption, (2) determine the level of fear of crime among Turkish citizens, (3)…

Assessed children of three age groups (4-5, 6-7, and 8-10) on reality/fantasy distinction and story-schema development after viewing episode of "Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers." Found that only oldest children could make clear distinction between reality and fantasy, and that older children showed mastery of other study variables: memory…

Public broadcasting increased the number of programs for older children during the 1994-95 television season. Data from the Yankelovich Youth Monitor, a survey of 1,211 subjects aged 6 to 17 years, provide some information about response to these programs and give some insight into serving the 9 to 11 age group in particular. Television continued…

The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the opinions of parents of pre-school children about children's programmes on TV. The study had two phases: In the first step "The Evaluation Scale for Children's Programmes" was translated into Turkish, the reliability and validity of the scale was tested through analyzing of the data…

Recorded home television viewing of 2-, 5-, 8-, 12-year olds, and adults on time-lapse videotapes over 10-day period. Found that cuts, movement, and overt purposeful character behavior were positively related to viewer's looking behavior, independent of child versus adult programming. Associations with looking behavior for other features depended…

Introduces a theoretical perspective on media viewing choices, grounded in social identity theory. Content analysis demonstrates that child, younger adult, and older adult television viewers show a preference for viewing characters of their own age. The experiment demonstrates that young adults' preference for viewing young adult characters exists…

Implementation of the first U.S. television program rating system based on identifying content that could be viewed by specific age groups began in January, 1997. This exploratory survey examined the context of how young people responded to the ratings system. Participating in the May 1997 survey were 462 students in fourth, eighth, and tenth…

Research indicates that children are especially vulnerable to the effects of television viewing. Taking a psychological, social-science perspective, this book explores how television viewing affects children. Chapter 1, "Introduction," (MacBeth) discusses the issues involved, how researchers go about studying media effects, whether television…