Research has shown television characters to be overwhelmingly portrayed as sex-stereotyped. Recently, however, more unstereotyped characters have been introduced into television programming. It was hypothesized that college-age subjects, when presented with prime-time characters pre-rated as examples of stereotyped and unstereotyped portrayals, would perceive these differential stereotypes on ratings of sex-typed traits. Prime-time television characters (N=50) were rated for their levels of stereotyped behavior, attractiveness, and liking qualities by college student subjects. Results supported the hypothesis. All characters were generally rated higher, i.e., more masculine, on the male-valued traits than on the female-valued traits by both sexes of student raters. Support for the possibility of sex differences in the subjects' ratings was provided by a significant interaction between the sex of the rater and the male- and female-valued traits, which showed that female subjects rated characters as more "feminine" on female-valued traits than did male subjects. Unstereotyped characters were found to be generally more attractive and liked more than stereotyped characters. Additionally, female raters seemed especially sensitive to the differences between stereotyped characters. (Author)