Discusses the problems of evaluating the ability of public television to perform a teaching role. (JMF)

Reports on study of intersex and interrace dominance patterns in prime time television focusing on two-person interactions between men and women, Blacks and Whites, to determine if one person dominates or if two parties interact as equals. Relates sex and race dominance patterns to several program and character variables. (JMF)

Examines television viewers' interpretations of a particular narrative from the British soap opera "Coronation Street" after they had watched it unfold over some time in natural viewing circumstances. Identifies and discusses the interpretations of four clusters of viewers ranked in terms of their relative allegiance to the characters.…

Studies how network television news responded to three 1983 news stories on the nuclear threat: (1) the theory of nuclear winter; (2) the fictional film "The Day After"; and (3) discussion by members of the Reagan administration of the possibility of fighting and prevailing in a limited nuclear war. (MS)

Takes a single television news report and inquires into the strategies that governed the way it made its subject into a story. Suggests how to regard the discourse of television journalism in the nuclear era by attempting to describe the logic governing the creation of meaning. (MS)

Demonstrates a causal relationship between television portrayals of the ideal body and the distortion of self-perceived body size in a young female audience. (SR)

Studies the effects of the visual component of television news upon viewer recall of content. Asserts that story brevity, background information scarcity, and the combination of visual and verbal information in television news militate against learning by viewers. Concludes that visual elements tend to be more memorable than verbal ones. (SG)

Discovers that having cable television in the house may result in more viewing sanctions as well as more unsanctioned viewing for children, although younger children receive more parental attention to their television viewing whether or not they have access to cable. (PRA)

Examines some features of the new television service in South Africa and offers predictions about potential consequences of such technological advancement. (MH)

Presents a survey to determine how ethnics thought the media presented them to the public, and to relate these perceptions to media performance, use of ethnic media, ethnic identification, and demographic variables. (JMF)

Discusses the effects on public television of competition from cable television and video recorders. Outlines the need for public television to reevaluate and redefine its program service. (JMF)

Contributes to scholarship on the effects of television on children. Finds that the most important characteristics valued by both Dutch and U.S. children 6 to 11 years old were comprehensibility and action, closely followed by humor, "interestingness,""innocuousness," realism, violence, and romance. Finds boys in both samples…

Finds that the private dialog between parents and children closely approximated the public dialog about TV family portrayals by focusing on TV family realism, structure, and relationship models. Shows that a social learning model was implicit in participants' arguments, and that most participants argued that family portrayals affect expectations…

Discusses the development of curricula to make children more critical evaluators of television content. Evaluates the extent to which children learned the content of the curricula, applied it to their reasoning about television programs, and used it to mediate between exposure to selected content and the effects of that content. (JMF)

Uses content analysis of television characters in all occupations across 30 seasons to test the argument that television entertainment depicts business negatively. Reaffirms that television stigmatizes the occupation of business, independently of economic factors. Notes that these results pose a challenge to mass communications theory that…