A national telephone survey indicated that audiences rated the television production of "Roots" positively in terms of the following: realistic portrayal of the people and the times; relevance for contemporary race relations; perceived emotional effect; and increased understanding of the psychology of black people. However, a comparison of the television production with the book, "Roots," reveals that commercial television was more concerned with appealing to a mass audience than with reflecting the authentic quality of the original text. The television version obscured the author's black point of view and altered the basic message of the book in that it magnified the importance of the whites in the plot (Captain Davies was not a compassionate man in the novel) and drastically reduced the amount of time devoted to the main character's life in Africa and the ethnic background that was integral to the theme of the story. (MAI)