Suburban middle class American situation comedies of the 1950s and 1960s idealized the postwar family ensemble with its unproblematic achievement of quality family life. The homemaker as portrayed in these sitcoms was positioned at the center of the postwar consumer economy by the consumer product industry, which built its economy on defining the…

Noting that the television movie "The Day After" (aired November 20, 1983) is probably the most important of the films generating discussion about the issue of nuclear war, this paper describes a study that examined the rhetorical vision of nuclear war depicted in the film and the ways in which that vision corresponds to the images held…

This paper argues that in presidential politics new and highly sophisticated image-building techniques and the technological means for creating messages have proliferated during the past twenty years. The paper claims that the area where the most "image-building" is conducted is the television spot advertisement, but points out that…

To provide information concerning television and its impact on reading, a study was conducted to determine if the programing on a commercial television network would reveal a low number of positive references to reading. Programing was observed from 3:00 p. m. until 9:00 p. m. daily and from 9:00 A. M. to noon on Saturdays for a period of three…

Argues that television programs must be polysemic to achieve popularity because of the wide variety of subcultures represented in the television audience. Analyzes two scenes from "Hart to Hart" to demonstrate the textual devices that bear the dominant ideology and those that resist it. (JD)

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)

Television teaches children gender-specific behaviors, attitudes, characteristics, and personality traits. Research indicates that by observing male and female characters on television, children learn to label certain characteristics and behaviors as masculine or feminine and to assign traditional sex-role stereotypes to careers. Content studies…

Television programming has long been recognized as an effective method of educating children. This paper investigated the degree of exposure an educational children's program, Sesame Street, gave to female and male characters and the extent to which these characters were stereotypically portrayed. Children's Television Workshop produces 110…

A study analyzed prime time television programs for the presence of interpersonal predicaments, specifically family conflict and situations involving jealousy, envy, and rivalry. The portrayal of these situations was evaluated according to relevant pro- and antisocial criteria. A total of 17 one-hour episodes and 24 half-hour episodes were…

A study compared the visibility and participation of women working in United States television with that of women working in television in other countries. Video tapes of five consecutive evening news broadcasts in 1986 from the United States, Japan, Sri Lanka, Colombia, and Jamaica were analyzed for such data as the proportion of women anchors,…

Although "The Equalizer" and "Finder of Lost Loves" are different kinds of prime time fiction--urban thriller on the one hand and fantasy melodrama on the other--they share an underlying dramatic structure and symbolic problematic in their repeated enactments of a therapeutic cure overseen by a mediating, authority figure. The…

To describe the eating habits of the children and adults on several popular prime time television series, this study examined the latent content of television messages concerned with health care and nutrition. A sample of nine episodes of "The Cosby Show,""Growing Pains" and "Family Ties," during the 1986-87 season was studied. Each program was…

A study used 18 television commericals, selected as representative of a variety of executional styles and products, and generated scores for each of them on 18 dimensions of structural variation. In addition, a multivariate analysis was used to examine the relations both among the dimensions and between these dimensions and some common measures of…

The study assessed the effect of two stylistic features of a prosocial television program, visual focusing and verbal labeling, on learning and behavior. Forty male and 40 female preschool children viewed one of five versions of a children's quiz show. Camera zooms and verbal labels alone and in combination emphasized sharing in four prosocial…

In recent years, television has received increasing criticism for its portrayal of the female as the passive mother, homemaker, or secretary. Recent content analysis studies of North American television broadcasting support the assertion that women have been stereotyped as second class citizens in a man's world; seldom are they presented as…