Prime-time Television Programs Research Articles

Children as Citizens in Training: Political Socialization for a Strong Democracy

The author analyzed the content of three popular prime-time televi sion programs and the California state school system's social science curriculum to determine their possible effect on the development of political efficacy in children. The findings were checked by conduct ing focus groups with children. This exploratory research suggests that participation in a youth service organization is a more potent agent for the transference of knowledge, values, and skills relating to political efficacy and civic voluntarism than either television or formal education.

Consulting to Change Media Contents: Two Cases in Alcohol Education

Two ten-year studies featuring intervention with media on the topic of alcohol are presented. The method of intervention, called cooperative consultation, is described and contrasted with other methods. Earlier experience dealing with prime-time television program personnel is reported. The first study involved a soap opera, which proved different from prime-time programs. Using the methods of content analysis, before-and-after studies found change in the desired direction. The second study was done with a business columnist on a daily newspaper. Again, before-and-after tests showed the indicated change-in some categories more than others. The efficacy of particular characteristics of the method of cooperative consultation are noted, and further work in related areas is suggested.

Alcohol on prime-time television.

Alcohol acts and scenes from a sample of 122 hours of prime-time television programs aired in the fall of 1984 were studied. Approximately 80% of the 116 episodes studied contained one or more appearances of alcohol. The appearance of alcohol on dramatic series was especially high with 9 of 10 episodes containing some verbal or visual reference to alcohol. Alcohol was ingested on 60% of all the programs. Overall, the sample contained 10.65 drinking acts per hour. Dramas, comprising 56% of the sample hours, accounted for most alcohol behavior--11 drinking acts per hour. Put in audience terms, a regular viewer of dramas would be likely to see more than 20 drink acts per evening.

The portrayal of alcohol on television

THIS paper presents the results of a systematic con tent analysis of the portrayal of alcohol in two weeks of prime time television programmes. The analysis takes its point of departure in the argument that, in order to begin to understand the possible contri bution of television to alcohol-related beliefs and practices, it is necessary to look beyond the tra ditional research focus on persuasive communi cation, and examine the images of alcohol in television programmes generally. The analysis shows that alcohol images are prominent, particu larly in fictional programmes. Alcohol consumption is associated with pleasant sociable behaviour and with glamorous and affluent life-styles. There is little portrayal of the potentially negative effects and con sequences of drinking. Directions for further research are suggested.

Effect of television programming and advertising on alcohol consumption in normal drinkers.

The drinking behavior of 96 male normal drinking college students was assessed after they viewed a videotape of a popular prime-time television program complete with advertisements. Different versions of the videotape were used to evaluate the effects of a television program with and without alcohol scenes as crossed with the effects of three different types of advertisements (i.e., beer, nonalcoholic beverages and food). After viewing the videotape, the subjects, who were led to believe that they were participating in two separate and unrelated sets of experimental procedures, were asked to perform a taste rating of light beers, which actually provided an unobtrusive measure of their alcohol consumption. The results provided no support for the widely held assumption that drinking scenes in television programs or televised advertisements for alcoholic beverages precipitate increased drinking by viewers. This finding, however, must be considered in the context of the laboratory setting of the study, and thus may not generalize to real-life television viewing. Further research in this area is clearly needed, including an evaluation of the effects of television program content and advertisements on other populations (e.g., alcohol abusers).

Trends in tobacco use on television.

A two-week composite sample of prime time television programming from fall 1984 was analyzed for portrayals of alcohol and tobacco. Earlier studies note that smoking acts have progressively declined, suggesting smoking is no longer as frequent on prime time television. The current study notes higher levels of smoking. This could be an indication that smoking is returning, and/or related to recent programming changes featuring more dramas on prime time television.

Perceived vulnerability to crime, criminal victimization experience, and television viewing

Survey data were utilized to examine the relationship between television viewing and perceptions of personal vulnerability to crime. The analyses revealed that the strength and direction of such associations were contingent upon: (a) the viewer's predominant modality or source of criminal victimization experience (mediated, interpersonal, or direct); (b) the type of primetime television program viewed (crime‐related or noncrime‐related); and (c) the contextual nature of the perception of personal vulnerability to crime being considered. Discussion of the implications of these findings for future research focused on the relationship between television viewing and social perceptions.

Television Portrayals of Drinking and Driving

Cases of drinking and driving on U.S. prime-time television programs over an eight-year period are described and analyzed. They are also judged according to criteria developed within the industry. Some stories are rated as consonant with public health education, some are not. Central criteria for analysis involve the portrayed consequences of DWI, the way humor is used, and the potential for identification between TV characters and viewers. Recent episodes have reduced the stereotyping found earlier and have presented the greater complexity and subtlety as well as the everyday nature of DWI.

Violent Program Content in Music Video

VioLit summary: OBJECTIVE: The purpose of this study by Caplan was to assess the level of violence in music videos and specifically to determine if music videos portray women as victims more often than men and if they portray men as more violent than women. METHODOLOGY: A quasi-experimental design was employed for this study. The research analyzed a sample of MTV (Music Television) videos through content analysis. The study used a two-stage cluster sampling technique. The videos were collected during a 15 day period. One hour of each 24 hour period was randomly chosen. A total of 15 hours of music videos were selected for analysis. There were a total of 139 videos and 418 characters. The characters included 332 males and 86 females. The coding of the videos was done by trained coders. The primary units of analysis were videos and characters. Variables such as sex of each character, number of violent acts, and protagonist/victim of violent acts were coded. The study used the Incident Classification and Analysis Form (ICAF) definition of violence: Force or the compelling threat of force that may result in harm to life or to valued objects. Violence involves harmful or antisocial consequences. Violence involves behavior which violates, damages or abuses another person, animal or valued (p. 146). The research defined the victim as the object of the violence and the protagonist as the perpetrator of the violence. FINDINGS/DISCUSSION: The author's hypotheses were that females are the victims of significantly more violence than are males and that males are significantly more violent than females. The study found that music videos are more violent than commercial television. The literature reported that prime time television programs average 5.21 violent acts an hour. The study found that music videos average 10.18 violent acts an hour. The data showed that women were not shown as victims more often than men. It was found that there was no significant difference between sex and protagonist/victim status. The study found that men were not more violent than women in the videos. It was shown that there was no significant difference between sex and number of violent acts. It was found that both men and women are portrayed as victims and protagonists. The research noted that in many videos a man attacked a woman and then the woman attacked the man in the next scene. The author concluded that rock videos are dominated by violence and contain almost twice as much violence as commercial television. AUTHOR'S RECOMMENDATIONS: The author recommended that future studies of music videos should consider sampling a larger population than MTV. He suggested that future studies examine sexuality in music videos as well as music videos and the new wave subculture. (CSPV Abstract - Copyright © 1992-2007 by the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, Institute of Behavioral Science, Regents of the University of Colorado) Media Violence Effects Exposure to Violence Portrayal of Women Music Violence Music Video Television Viewing Television Violence Gender Differences Program-Film Content Violence Against Women 09-04

An analysis of alcohol portrayal on prime-time television.

A content and functional analysis of alcohol use was conducted on the 15 most popular prime-time television programs in late 1979. These shows were videotaped and then rated by two independent observers. Interrater agreement, averaged over all code categories, was 91%. Results indicated that alcohol use and verbalizations about alcohol are frequent occurrences on prime-time television. Antecedent conditions to alcohol ingestion were identified. However, no consistent behavioral consequences of alcohol use were observed.

Drinking on Television: A Five-Year Study

A five-year study of prime-time television programs showed that alcohol was the preferred beverage used by characters. In the final years viewers were exposed to more than eight alcohol drinking acts per hour. The rate of this activity was rising. In comparison, use of coffee, tea, soft drinks and water was less frequent, although the rates were also rising. All kinds of characters were seen drinking, with one major exception: youth. Consequences of alcohol abuse, and the response of other people to such abuse, were not always shown. Several qualitative patterns in the drinking process were noted as subject to change when television personnel are shown the research results.

Applying semiotics to the study of selected prime time television programs

The montage structures of six prime time television series were analyzed using the methodology developed by film semiotician, Christian Metz. The research indicates that the use of semiotics is applicable to studies of television programs.

Television and American Culture: The Mass Medium and the Pluralist Audience

The study explores the potential influence of television on trends toward cultural homogenization in American society. Depth interviews focused on two variables: the analytic response-viewers' thoughts about the program itself, including, for example, comments on how plot elements relate to the program as a whole or the character of the script or acting, and the interpretive response-viewers' thoughts about the program's relevance to their own lives or broader issues of society and culture. The data support the hypothesis of cultural homogenization revealing similar indices of analytic and interpretive response across educational levels. W. Russell Neuman is Assistant Professor of Political Science and Co-Director of the Research Program on Communications Policy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This article is a revised version of a paper delivered at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, New York, 1980. Public Opinion Quarterly Vol. 46:471-487 ? 1982 by the Trustees of Columbia University Published by ElsevierScience Publishing Co., Inc. 0033-362X/82/0046-471/$2.50 This content downloaded from 157.55.39.138 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 05:56:10 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms 472 W. RUSSELL NEUMAN ratings point for one program over the course of a year amounts to a potential 15-million-dollar loss in revenues for the network. Perhaps the most striking aspect of the television phenomenon from a sociological point of view is its universality. Television is socially defined as the of the masses. And although professors, professionals, and the educated elite in general may claim to have time only for occasional news, sports, and a play or concert on the public channel, the recurrent implication of systematic research is that they watch the same situation comedies and action adventure programs just about as often as their neighbors in blue collars and hard hats (Wilensky, 1965). As Hirsch has put it, television has come to provide a centrally produced, standardized and homogenous culture (1978, 400). Social scientists, however, have devoted surprisingly little attention to the long-term impact of this core of shared experience in our society. To what extent has television become a major force of integration and cultural uniformity? Are individuals from diverse and cultural backgrounds really responding in the same ways to these common cultural forms? We find that better educated viewers watch slightly less television than the less well educated-about three minutes less per day for each additional year of formal education-but the types of programs viewed are virtually identical.' Are better educated viewers more attentive and do they draw on extensive exposure to literature, theater, and cinema in responding to the television they see? In an attempt to explore whether people from diverse backgrounds who watch the same program actually see the same program, we designed a depth interview technique based on a series of increasingly structured questions about which elements in a program stand out in viewers' minds and how they evaluate what they have seen. Transcripts of these interviews were systematically coded to derive quantitative measures of the attentiveness as well as the level of analytic and interpretive thinking among various groups in response to a random sample of prime-time television programming. The analysis focuses on four questions: (1) Is television thought-provoking? (2) Is the response to television differentiated by educational level? (3) Does the level of response vary across program types, or was McLuhan right after all, that the medium pretty much determines the I The three-minutes-per-day figure is derived from Bower (1973), Table 6-2, p. 132. Some studies have suggested that longer working hours and more out-of-house activities rather than cultural tastes explain the small negative relationship between education and television exposure (Samuelson, et al., 1963). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.138 on Sun, 26 Jun 2016 05:56:10 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms TELEVISION AND AMERICAN CULTURE 473 message? (4) To what extent do the expectations and attitudes of the viewer (the social definition of television) influence the medium's impact?

Sex-Role Stereotyping on Prime-Time Television

Abstract Female and male characters who were central to each of 14 prime-time television programs were monitored to determine the frequencies with which they exhibited sex-role stereotypic behaviors. Results indicated few sex differences on most of the behaviors included for study. However, males were portrayed more often than females in occupation-related situations, while females were shown more often than males in the home and were shown exhibiting more emotional distress than males. In addition, males were more often shown at work than other places, whereas females were portrayed with equal frequency in the home, at work, and in other activities. Analysis of problem-solving abilities revealed that males were most likely to solve their own problems on television. Females were more likely to deal with the problems of others or required assistance from others to deal with their own problems. Results are discussed in terms of possible shifts in current television programming and in light of the possible i...

Update: physically intimate and sexual behavior on prime-time television, 1978-79.

The 1978-79 prime time television programming season was examined to determine the frequency and portrayal of sex, and it was compared to the 2 previous seasons analyzed (1975 and 1977). 68 programs, representative of the 1978-79 season, were recorded directly off the air between the hours of 8 p.m. and 11 p.m. during a 2-week period beginning on October 1978. During the 1st week, all regularly scheduled prime time drama, crime/adventure, situation comedy, and variety prorams and movies broadcast by the 3 major networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) were videotaped. During the 2nd week, all regularly scheduled programming which had been preempted by sports events and specials the previous week were recorded. Thus, the final sample included 1 week of the regularly scheduled prime time offerings of the 3 major networks plus 2 weeks of movies. The videotape of each program was coded independently by 2 of 9 trained coders, 1 male and 1 female, using the same formal coding scheme that had been used in the 1978 analysis. The original coding scheme included 12 categories of physically intimate and sexual behavior ranging from nonsexual interpersonal touching (e.g., handshakes) to affectionate displays (e.g., kissing) to typical sexual behaviors of references (e.g., flirtatious behavior, verbal innuendo, heterosexual intercourse). A new category was added, sex education and romance, which was comprised of verbal references to issues such as contraception, pregnancy, and going steady. The frequency of appearance of the least intimate behaviors (kissing and hugging) showed a gradual increase over the 3 sampled years. In contrast, the frequency of occurrence of several of the controversial categories increased substantially. Specifically, contextually implied intercourse from no weekly occurrences in 1975 to 15 in 1977 and 24 in 1978; sexual innuendos increased in frequency from about 1 reference/hour in 1975 to 7 in 1977, and to almost 11 in 1978. Direct verbal references to intercourse increased from 2 occurrences/week in 1975 to 6 references in 1977 and 53 in 1978. Only 3 categories showed a decrease in frequency since the 1977 analysis: nonaggressive touching, physical suggestiveness, and aggressive touching. Several of the discouraged sexual practice categories were rarely if ever coded in the 1977-78 analyses (e.g., incest, pederosis, exhibitionism, fetishism, and masturbation). There was a substantial increase in frequency for 2 categories: allusions to prostitution increased more than 4-fold, and allusions to aggressive sexual contacts increased 3-fold from 1977 to 1978. For 2 categories, transvestism/transsexualism and voyeurism, there was a drop in frequency over the year.

Televised Models of Female Achievement Revisited: Some Progress

In a previous study which analyzed the content of a sample of 1972 primetime television programming, Manes and Melnyk (1974) concluded that television portrayed employment and marriage as incompatible life‐styles for women. The present study applied the same content analysis procedures to a sample of 1978 prime‐time television programming. Results indicated that female characters employed outside the home were significantly less likely to be married than were employed male characters (p <.001), a finding which replicated the result obtained previously. In contrast to the 1972 results, however, analyses of the 1978 data revealed that employed married women were not significantly less likely than either their male counterparts or unemployed housewives to be depicted as successfully married.

Sex differences in reinforcement and punishment on prime-time television

Prime-time television programs were analyzed for frequencies of positive reinforcement and punishment exchanged among performers varying in age and sex. Results indicated that most responses were given by and directed to adult males. Moreover, while adult males exhibited and received similar frequencies of reinforcement and punishment, adult females were likely to give and to be the recipients of more reinforcement than punishment. Proportional analyses which controlled for sex differences in frequencies of responses revealed that females more often exhibited and received reinforcement, whereas males more often exhibited and received punishment. Results are interpreted from a social learning theory perspective and the implications for children's learning of positive and negative behaviors are explored.

Economic Threat and Authoritarianism in Television Programs: 1950–1974

1761 prime-time television programs aired on the three major networks during the first week in October for each of the years from 1950 to 1974 were judged as either authoritarian or nonauthoritarian. As predicted, the proportion of authoritarian programs in a given year correlated positively with the annual unemployment rate, for that year, the change in the consumer price index from the previous year, and the proportion of Gallup Poll respondents who mentioned economic problems as most important in the U. S. A.

The Trauma of TV's Troubled Soap Families

Twenty million viewers, by TV network estimates, follow the daily tribulations of daytime soap opera characters. Audience identification can be so complete that viewers send in gifts for drama brides or expectant mothers, and sympathy messages for those bereaved. A veteran player said recently: I get letters from fans who have been writing for the entire time I've been on the show... . (Drake, 1972). What is known about these twenty million viewers? Census figures reveal how many households at what income levels have television sets. The University of Michigan Survey Center reports that the unemployed watch more television than the employed, the less educated more than the better educated (Robinson, 1969), and a Harris poll finds that the poor watch more than the rich (White and Averson, 1968). Sponsors know from Nielsen ratings that their viewers are primarily fulltime housewives (HO) with smaller numbers of other housebound adults such as invalids and older citizens. Among incidental viewers are preschool children. Although much has been written about prime time television programming as to its function or dysfunction in our society, the daytime dramas have been largely ignored. Perhaps social analysts have not considered their influence as models of family roles and interaction patterns worth the time and energy which would be required for valid analysis.

Teenagers and TV Violence: How they Rate and View it

Teenagers were asked to define violence and to rate prime-time television programs on the basis of violent content. High and low viewers of violent content were examined for differences.