To explore the idea of image complexity, i.e., the more complex the television news image, the more appeal it will have to audiences, two time series measures were obtained by showing a regular half hour broadcast of a "CBS Evening News" program to a group of viewers. The two measures were an objective, machine-based measure of the complexity of the television image across space (static complexity), and a subjective, semantic differential measure obtained at 15-second intervals throughout the newscast from 110 subjects in a response laboratory. The incorporation of time lags revealed two particular features: (1) there was significant evidence of cumulation, reaching back as far as 150 seconds, in the effect the static complexity had on subject responses; and (2) the form complexity variable, static complexity, when lagged back 150 seconds and tested against an authoregressive form of the subject responses, accounted for some 31% of the variance in those subject responses. Results also revealed that subjects showed significant variation in their responses to the newscast material up to 120 seconds in advance of associated changes in static complexity. The results may have implications for research in television news that confines itself only to content based variables at the expense of form variables, and that assumes only a cross-sectional relationship between newscast material and audience responses. (Author/HOD)