A study was conducted to examine the hypothesis that the distracting nature of incidental information inherent to television news, combined with the absence of headlines, might result in television viewers remembering less central and more incidental information than they would when reading a newspaper article that uses headlines to condense the central point of a story. Twenty students in a college psychology class viewed a videotape of the first 15 minutes of a television news broadcast, while 20 other subjects read a newspaper constructed by the researchers by transcribing each news story presented in the television broadcast. The subjects were immediately given a multiple choice test, with half of the 30 questions derived from central information and the other half from incidental information. The results indicated that central information was remembered better for print than for television, but the effect was not significant. There was, however, a significant interaction between time and medium. Delay in testing affected recognition of newsprint items more than television items. Recognition for central information was slightly greater for newsprint in the immediate condition, but recognition of incidental information was much greater for television in the delayed testing condition. (HTH)