In light of the Kerner Commission's (1968) recommendations that Blacks be included more frequently on television and in a diversity of roles, a study examined how the portrayal of Blacks on television has changed since 1968 and how Blacks are currently portrayed in commercial television series. Samples of all national network commercial television…

This paper reviews a number of studies of the portrayal of blacks and other minorities on television. Statistics and conclusions drawn from these studies are used to illustrate the argument that: (1) minorities are either excluded, presented as tokens on otherwise all white shows, or concentrated in large numbers on a relatively few shows; and (2)…

A study analyzed the features of nonstandard English spoken on television during the hours when children are most likely to be watching. A grammatical analysis of the speech of 150 television characters revealed that, in general, television presented a homogenized version of nonstandard English. The relative frequency of usage of nonstandard…