Provides an overview of articles included in this issue that address automatic evaluation of public service announcements about AIDS that are aimed at high-risk, low-literacy individuals; how children construe television programs; the concept of quality in broadcasting; and the use of video for inservice teacher training. (LRW)

Presents a series of activities using data collection and interpretation techniques designed for levels 1-8, 1-5, 3-6, and 4-8 that integrate mathematics and social studies through the common theme of television viewing. Includes an activity sheet for parents to use with their children, three class-activity sheets, and a data sheet. (MDH)

Suggests practices to use and to avoid using when reading books to or with young and elementary school children. Also suggests how television viewing has supplanted reading among children and their families, and how parents and teachers can control children's television viewing and use television to its best advantage. (BB)

Reports on a 1988 survey of adolescents from two San Francisco Bay Area schools that tested an index of the frequency with which parents actively mediate children's interpretations of television messages. The predictive ability of the index for skepticism, media use, and involvement in public affairs was tested; and several family communication…

Updates knowledge about the representation of occupations on prime-time network dramatic television using data on 14,902 television characters, and explores how these representations may be related to perceptions of over 3,000 high school students about their future work. Television may be doing young people a disservice in its portrayals. (SLD)

Surveys television cartoons for preschoolers to analyze how they present the female gender. Finds that infant, shrew, eccentric, mother, frump, vamp, and twin role models dominate; argues that these stereotypes limit children's imagination of other possibilities. Notes that the repertoire of female characters seems to have become more…

The authors conducted a survey of 1,758 elementary school children (6-14 years old) from December 2001, to March 2002, in 3 Chinese cities with different levels of television advertising. The authors used D. R. John's (1999) model of consumer socialization as the theoretical framework for their study. More than half of the children whom the…

This book offers advice and specific guidelines for making the most of the learning and entertainment potential of video and the new media. It shows how parents can carefully select and use TV programs, videos, and the new media to enhance their children's intellectual and emotional growth--liberating parents from TV "guilt." Chapters in…

Intended for both childcare professionals and parents, this book lists activities from episodes of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood television program, and can be used with or without watching the program. Each activity is assigned a number which corresponds to the television episode in which the activity is featured, and a national PBS Broadcast…

Television advertising aimed at children is explored, including its regulation, techniques, and research on its effects. Particular attention is given to sexual stereotypes in commercials, including an analysis of certain commercials. A commercial literacy unit is presented for use with fourth graders. The history of advertising targeted at…

This study examined the effects of family communication environment and parental mediation of television content on third-, sixth-, and ninth-graders' perceptions of realism and similarity of television content and identification with television characters. Subjects, 627 northern California students and 486 of their parents, responded to episodes…

A study investigated the viewing behavior of a sample of public television supporters, specifically examining the relationship of their social characteristics to viewing and to knowledge about Africa as presented in the series "The Africans." Subjects, 120 District of Columbia adults drawn from the membership lists of a local public TV…

Focusing on how television viewing fits into a general model of consumer consumption patterns, a study examined (1) the extent to which the viewing of certain television content can be considered a "norm" of society, (2) similarities and differences between the norms for adults and those for children, and (3) some of the antecedents of…

Miami-Dade Community College (MDCC) has its own cable television channel by lease agreement with Storer Communications, Inc., enabling the college to reach a potential viewership of more than 100,000 subscribers. The channel, which primarily broadcasts telecourses for long-distance learning and a "bulletin board" of campus activities and…

Nine units help senior high school students critically examine the influence of television on their lives. Topics covered are: the role of television in one's life, television's presentation of reality, commercials, program production, conflict on television, heroes and models, relationships, problems and solutions presented on television shows,…