The major topic is the running battle between news media and the government, as reflected in documentary exposes like "The Selling of the Pentagon,""Migrant," and "Banks and the Poor." The best examples of broadcast journalism during the year are reviewed, along with the response they got from the press, the…

In an effort to identify critical evaluation skills, interview information is analyzed looking at four types of differences: differences between age groups, differences between children who did and did not change their attitudes after viewing an entertainment program, differences among those who ascribed varying degrees of credibility to…

Television's combination of wide appeal and potential for distortion is giving advocates of equality for the sexes concern about its influence in perpetuating sexist notions. (Editor)

Describes the promotion and public relations campaign and sale of commercial time by the American Broadcasting Corporation for "The Day After," a movie depicting nuclear holocaust, and discusses Nielsen Company findings and a J. Walter Thompson USA audience analysis and reaction survey regarding the program and its advertisers. (MBR)

A study examined viewer recall of television commercial content as influenced by both commercial spot positioning within breaks and the congruence or dissonance of the affective (emotionally evocative) formats of the program contexts and commercials. Objectives were to determine whether commercials will have greater rates of viewer recall if: (1)…

Examines the perceptions of elderly viewers about the usefulness of television commercials in making consumer decisions. Variables considered include frequency of viewing, as well as education, race, age, sex, occupation, and income of viewers. Differences in education levels and income seem to be more important than age group. (JMF)

A content analysis of television programs presented during times likely to have high proportions of children in the audience indicated that entertainment programs contain messages about the political system which are often negative or inaccurate. (Author/MER)

"Lift Off" is a new, innovative children's television series produced by the Australian Children's Television Foundation that has been well received by young children, parents, critics, and educators. One typical half-hour program is profiled. Questions the claims that "Lift Off" will enrich the lives of a whole age cohort,…

Examines the effect of network and public television programs on children's: ability to attend to a task, time on task, and engagement in rough-and-tumble play. Sixty-two children were assigned to one of three groups that watched: (1) a public television program; (2) a network television program; and (3) no television and instead played with…

The Landscape Model of text comprehension was extended to the comprehension of audiovisual discourse from text and video TV news stories. Concepts from the story were coded for activation after each sequence, creating a matrix of activations that was reduced to a vector of the degree of total activation for each concept. In Study 1, the degree…

Although the national ideology emphasizes that the American Dream is available to immigrants, recent events have made public opinion hostile to two groups, Mexicans and Arabs. Popular culture has played a historic role in presenting sympathetic portrayals of immigrants and their assimilation to American culture. Current depictions of Mexican…

This report is a summary of a variety of educational services offered by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) supported television stations as reported in CPB's annual Station Activities Survey (1998). Highlights from the data include: 141 stations (80% of all CPB supported stations) provide educational services to elementary or secondary…

Research on incidental learning by children from television is both a cause and effect of the increasing attention being given by social and behavioral scientists to the influence of mass media. Laboratory-type experiments and data collected from everyday life are consistent in their findings, providing convincing evidence that television can…

A total of 699 Appalachian families with preschool children were surveyed to gather information on the availability and use of television, radio and telephone in their homes. The survey was designed to assess the practicality of using television as one of the components of the Marketable Preschool Education (MPE) Program, an extension of the…