This study provides a theoretical focus for evaluating media communication, a generic model which operationalizes this focus, and a case study which documents how this model was applied in the evaluation of the effectiveness of "Carrascolendas," a bilingual television program for children. The core of the model involves two indexes: "identification," which assesses viewers' affective involvement with characters, and "coorientation," which gauges viewers' understanding of a dramatic sequence, as well as the implications of this understanding for predicted viewer attention. These constructs are operationalized and integrated with a method of structurally analyzing the format of television programming. A multiple discriminant analysis of the coorientation and identification scores yielded significant intergroup differences across the variables of sex, grade, ethnicity, and city. Combined with the results of the structural analysis, these differences pinpointed desirable program modifications in the areas of character age and ethnicity, message complexity, and message format. (Author/AA)