Ready to Learn is an outreach initiative designed to increase the potential of PBS children's television programs to teach children cognitive and social skills. The program funds workshops for parents and teachers, materials supplementing children's television programs, children's book distribution, and "PBS Families" and "PBS para…

A study presented the results of two national, random sample surveys about the use of and interaction with the television ratings system by parents and children. The telephone survey was conducted between April 2-26, 1998, and involved interviews with 1,358 parents of children ages 2-17 and 446 children ages 10-17. Results were reported for 69…

Reviews effects of television on various aspects of children's behavior, including learning through passive viewing, lowered attention span, school achievement and reading, aggression, sex role stereotyping, and prosocial behaviors. Concluding sections focus on effects of television on family life and point out ways parents and teachers can better…

A research study into the effects of educational television on British secondary school pupils investigated the attitude changes and other effects resulting from follow-up activities such as discussions and essay writing. Results showed that follow-up activities stimulate pupils to become more open and tentative and less dogmatic. (EAO)

Reports results of a study of television entertainment programing that tested the relationships between exposure to medical programs and positive affect toward doctors, exposure to entertainment programs in general and acceptance of traditional sex roles, and exposure to ethnic programs and concern about racial problems in society. (GT)

Examines how emotional content in televised messages intensifies physiological attentional responses. Explains that heart rate data indicating both shorter-term responses and longer-term arousal were collected from 10 female and 4 male advertising students. Finds that emotional content increases physiological arousal in viewers and that heart…

Describes a three-week unit, "Television Communication and Critical Thinking," designed to make junior high students more forceful writers and discriminating viewers. Argues that by analyzing television advertising, news, and programming, students learn to think more critically about communication techniques and to use those techniques…

Discusses the publication process as well as research and development activities of The Magazine Group, the part of the Children's Television Workshop (CTW) that produces print materials for children, parents, and elementary school teachers. Highlights include reformatting a magazine, testing story appeal, testing children's humor, and the…

Many studies have shown that children of various ages learn from educational television, but the studies have not explained how children extract and comprehend educational content from these television programs. This paper proposes a model, the "capacity model," that focuses on children's allocation of working memory resources while…

This discussion and activity guide is intended to accompany the third season (1991-92) of "Long Ago & Far Away," a dramatic series on public television which combines animation, live action, and puppetry to invite children ages 5 to 9 into the magical land of storytelling. The guide seeks to help teachers, librarians, or parents to…

Like other industries, television has its own version of the used-car dealership or second-hand store: off-network syndication. Since researchers who study television have rarely investigated the market for these programs, a study examined program and marketplace characteristics to determine which contributes most to the successful syndication of…

A content analysis comparing gender portrayals in 2,209 network television commercials was conducted. Many earlier studies treated television advertising's portrayal of men as unproblematic and excluded ads aimed specifically at men from the study sample. To address this shortcoming, the sample was chosen from three different day parts: (1)…

Television journalism has long been the object of study by scholars of news media ethics. A study examined the reasoning process and the criteria for judgment used by viewers when evaluating possibly problematic television (TV) news content, and analyzed these criteria as they are applied to ethical issues and problems in TV newscasts. Thirty-four…

The role of television in education in the USSR to teach moral development and to instill a selective attitude toward television programs is examined. (Author/JR)

Television programming is used to present different occupations, teach career awareness, and aid in the students' choices of careers. (JR)