This paper describes a study on the nature of the linguistic information presented in children's television programs which was conducted to compare the verbal communication features of different types of programs, determine whether there were adjustments of linguistic information that would facilitate young children's linguistic processing, and compare the patterns of linguistic features with those of nonlinguistic production features within the same shows. Results indicate that a better idea of the complexity of the message and the nature of the psychological processes involved in its interpretation can be obtained when linguistic features are included in the description of television messages; both the medium and the mental activity involved in understanding its linguistic message appear to be more complicated than previously thought. (CMV)