Prompted by the concern of parents and educators with both the process of a child's language acquisition and the amount of time spent watching television, a content analysis of children's television commercials was conducted to see if this form of mass media could be used to stimulate language skills in children. The 36 commercials were drawn from children's classic cartoons that aired in the early morning before children attended school. The language skills under examination were semantics, syntax, morphology, phonology, and pragmatics. Also recorded were the use of cliches and slang words, the inclusion of foreign accents and voice deviations, the pacing of commercials and the kind of visual stimuli offered and whether these stimuli corresponded to the verbal language offered in the commercials. From the findings it was concluded that television commercials served as excellent speech and language models in that more abstract words and complete sentences were featured. Grammatically correct sentences with good articulation and voice modulation were also evident. In addition, commercials offered good pragmatic skills such as turn taking, speaker sensitivity, prosocial models, and the logical order of events. (HOD)