Children and Television

Fifty Years of Research

Norma Pecora, John P. Murray, Ellen Ann Wartella

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2009
• ISBN:
  9781135251383
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Communication Studies
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

This seminal volume is a comprehensive review of the literature on children's television, covering fifty years of academic research on children and television.The work includes studies of content, effects, and policy, and offers research conducted by social scientists and cultural studies scholars. The research questions represented here consider the content of programming, children's responses to television, regulation concerning children's television policies, issues of advertising, and concerns about sex and race stereotyping, often voicing concerns that children's entertainment be held to a higher standard. The volume also offers essays by scholars who have been seeking answers to some of the most critical questions addressed by this research. It represents the interdisciplinary nature of research on children and television, and draws on many academic traditions, including communication studies, psychology, sociology, education, economics, and medicine. The full bibliography is included on CD.Arguably the most comprehensive bibliography of research on children and television, this work illustrates the ongoing evolution of scholarship in this area, and establishes how it informs or changes public policy, as well as defining its role in shaping a future agenda. The volume will be a required resource for scholars, researchers, and policy makers concerned with issues of children and television, media policy, media literacy and education, and family studies.

1 The Changing Nature of Children’s Television: Fifty Years of Research

Norma Pecora

Ohio University

While television was in its infancy Paul Lazarsfeld (1955),¹ in testimony before the Kefauver Committee on Juvenile Delinquency, called for a comprehensive program to study not only the effects of the new medium of television, but other “unorthodox kinds of studies which would add to our understanding” of these effects (p. 247). Unorthodox studies, according to Lazarsfeld, included collaborative and long-term research and studies of the family and of those involved in the creative process. Lazarsfeld argued for a well-funded, centralized organization or foundation to carry this agenda forward. Unfortunately, although the Surgeon General’s studies published in the 1970s were no doubt the model Lazarsfeld had in mind, rarely have his words been heeded. As we see here, much of the research in the field of children and television has been underfunded, short-term, isolated, uncoordinated studies carried out in the kind of seclusion he called “the accidental initiative of individual scholars” (p. 244). There are exceptions, of course, as illustrated by several of the contributors to this book, who have built organizations and institutes within their universities. We in the field tend to collaborate where possible with students, mentors, and colleagues—a process made more possible by the Internet—but for the most part Congress ignored Lazarsfeld’s appeal and left the research on this “burning social issue” (p. 244) to the vagaries of the academic climate.

However, what we do have is a body of research cumulated over the past 50 years by a diverse group of scholars. Their work reflects some underlying concerns we as a society have about youth and the media at different points in time. From the beginning we have worried about the effect of television on children, questions carried over from motion pictures, radio, and comic books, and we have been troubled by television’s ubiquitous nature. Two recent studies have looked back on media research in general (Bryant & Miron, 2004) and specifically funded research on children ages 0 to 6 (Rideout, Roberts, & Foehr, 2005). Bryant and Miron (2004) analyzed the literature of mass communication for the theoretical and scientific paradigms that have been “developed by communication scholars or imported from … various cognate disciplines” (p. 664). Although their work addressed theories, in general, and not specifically to the literature on children and the media, Bryant and Miron’s work is useful in understanding the theories that have informed our discipline. Most relevant is Piaget’s cognitive development theory that is central to much of the research on children and media. In the mass communication journals, Piaget was first used in 1971 “with a fairly even distribution use over time thereafter” (Bryant & Miron, 2004, p. 679). The Kaiser Family Foundation study analyzed funded research on children 0 to 6 that was published in peer-reviewed publications. They found that the first of this research was conducted in the early 1960s and has been grounded in social learning theory from the work of Bandura and others.

These concerns and questions have occurred in, according to Wartella and Reeves (1984) “the nexus of social values, political exigencies, and the cultural context of how media have been incorporated into American life” (p. 28). In this chapter we look at the more than 2,000 studies that address youth and television.² Organized around decades, this chapter will consider the studies in (a) the context of children’s culture for the decade; (b) the landscape of television; and (c) the research questions addressed during the decade.

Before beginning, it is important to place the questions asked about children and television in a historical context. These questions, and the theoretical and methodological foundations that inform them, did not raise full cloth out of the academic world but rather are grounded in a long tradition of social concerns about youth and the media. In 1909, Jane Addams wrote, “The theater becomes to them [youth] a ‘veritable house of dreams’ infinitely more real than the noisy streets and crowded factories” (Addams, 1909/1972, p. 76). Her words reflected a growing disquiet over the new medium of motion pictures and her alarm over the “effects” of the dream palaces set the agenda for research that followed. As each new medium was introduced, researchers have asked much the same question.

In their analysis of a selected sample of an earlier version of the database for this project,³ examining the years 1900 through 1960, Wartella and Reeves (1985) found that research questions have been similar as each new medium was introduced to the child audience. Their review of the preliminary database found “a progression from early attention studies of media use to increasing emphasis on issues of physical and emotional harm, and changes in children’s knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors (p. 120). In addition,” Wartella and Reeves pointed out that “studies about violence, sex, and advertising recur” (p. 126). Media use and audience preference studies most likely come in the first years of the introduction of a medium, followed by research that reflected the public debate about the impact of new technologies. They also commented on research that was conducted by a diverse population of scholars from the disciplines of psychology, sociology, education, communication, and social work. Indeed, there are more than 400 journals represented in this bibliography.

In an earlier article, Wartella and Reeves (1984) also examined how the research agenda on children and television changed over the years from 1955 to 1980. They found that there was a change in the nature of the child viewer with research that was more grounded in cognitive theory and developmental studies. During the 1970s “there [was] a . . . concern with the ways in which children of different ages make sense of and utilize the messages of television (p. 27). They identified the cycles of research as, first, the children’s use and preference of the medium, often followed by (or concurrent with) a concern for physical and emotional health effects. Last, according to Wartella and Reeves, researchers turned their attention to the “effects of media content on children’s knowledge, attitudes and behavior” (p. 27). The role of television in children’s lives becomes defined by content areas such as violence and sex. In their analysis of these 25 years of children’s television research, Wartella and Reeves pointed out that research studies were often policy driven. For example:

The first minor rumble in the number of violence citations occurred in 1961, the same year that Senator Dodd held Judiciary subcommittee hearings that included testimony on television and juvenile delinquency . . . also the year that FCC Chairman Newton Minow labeled television “a vast wasteland.” (p. 29)

According to them, both children’s research and media policy debates were limited until 1969 when the issue began to reach a zenith. In that year, the Surgeon General’s committee was established and research funding was awarded for a comprehensive examination of children and media. In 1972, the Surgeon General’s report was issued, and academic work in the area reached an all-time high. According to Wartella and Reeves (1984), advertising research showed a similar peak during Federal Trade Commission (FTC) hearings on children’s Saturday morning cartoons in 1978 and 1979.

Using the work of Reeves and Wartella (1982), in the first presentation of these bibliography data, Meadowcroft and McDonald (1986) analyzed a random sample of 163 studies on youth and the media from 1911 to 1980. Like Wartella and Reeves, they found there were peaks in the distribution of studies across the years. According to Meadowcroft and McDonald the first peak, 1925 to 1947, coincided with policy debates driven by the establishment of the Federal Radio Commission in 1927 and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1934. The second peak, 1969 to 1979, occurred during the time of the Commission on Obscenity and Pornography and the National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence in the late 1960s and the Surgeon General’s studies published in 1972. They argued, counter to Reeves and Wartella, that there was not a cyclical trend to the research on children and media as each new medium entered the culture. Meadowcroft and McDonald found, instead, that,

[w]ithin the first 10 years of research on any medium, research topics include: individual characteristics, viewing conditions, media content and learning of media content. Three initial research questions seem to emerge, therefore, in the first 10 years on children and an innovative medium: (1) What is the content of the medium? (2) How does the content affect different children? And (3) How do these effects vary, according to viewing contexts . . . research on each medium seems to address research topics independent of other media topic agendas. (p. 479)

For television, Meadowcroft and McDonald (1986) claimed variables were introduced into the research agenda in the following pattern:

Years 1–5: Media content; individual characteristics; viewing conditions; attitudes and interests; learning.⁴

Years 11–15: Bad behaviors; home/peer.

Years 16–20: Individual characteristics; advertising; attitudes/interest displacement.

Years 21–25: Antisocial-psychological; other psychological.

Years 31–35: Good behaviors

Years 36–40: Medium characteristics; unhealthy mental effects.

This chapter is not an attempt to prove or disprove either position; rather, the debate is offered as an example of the problematics that center around any attempt to characterize research variables. In other words, this is not a critique of the questions we have asked but rather the context in which we have asked them.

As we can see from Table 1.1, there have been an ever increasing number of studies throughout the five decades considered here, with the peak in the 1970s.

The number of research studies conducted over the past 50 or so years has increased dramatically. In the first decade there were fewer than 100 studies; since 1970 we have averaged at least five times that number per year. Certainly the Surgeon General’s study, in part, accounts for increased attention to this topic in the 1970s. We can only speculate as to why interest in this research has been sustained. In part, those who contributed to the Surgeon General’s studies made their reputation in the field and continued to build an expertise in the field; the growing academic community in all disciplines has meant an increase in research and books and journals in all disciplines; a rise in the research on children, in general, and children and media as an area of study; and, no doubt, those of us who have grown up with television find it an intellectual challenge. This has presented a formidable body of research, unfortunately, with little of the “systematic and overall planning” Lazarsfeld (1955, p. 244) called for. What follows here is an attempt to bring some coherency to the studies that have been done over the past 50 years and place them in the context of the time.⁵

TABLE 1.1 Distribution of Research Studies by Decade Children and Television

TELEVISION IS INTRODUCED: THE LATE 1940s

Television was introduced in the late 1940s as American industry shifted production from tools of war to tools of leisure and tried to meet the growing demand for household goods. The technology of television had been ready prewar but was put on hold. After World War II, it was quickly introduced. By 1954, 7 years after its introduction, 55% of households had television. Women who had taken the place of men in the workforce during the war years were encouraged to return to the home, which was often now in a new suburban development, and to raise a family. This idealized image of the family—White, middle-class, suburbia with mom in the kitchen and dad at work—was often perpetuated by the new television programs, such as Father Knows Best. Preschool was a limited concept and many children did not enter school until first grade. When children did reach school age, they often walked home for lunch, arriving in time to eat peanut butter sandwiches on Wonder Bread while watching one of the many locally produced noontime cartoon shows.

History has it that the first network children’s television program was Movies for the Small Fry in 1947, later Small Fry Club on the DuMont network, followed closely by Juvenile Jury on NBC and two puppet shows: Judy Splinters and Puppet Playhouse. A few programs at that time had limited network distribution but most were locally produced or syndicated (Davis, 1995; Erickson, 1995; Grossman, 1987; Hollis, 2001). TeleComics, later NBC Comics, was the first network cartoon series (Erickson, 1995), with westerns, action-adventures, storyteller, and variety shows dominating the schedule (Turow, 1981). According to Grossman (1987) and Turow (1981) there were no Saturday morning programs scheduled until about the mid- to late 1950s; most children’s programming was aired weekdays during the lunch hour, after school, or on Saturday or Sunday evening (Turow, 1981). Oky Doky Ranch, Small Fry Club, Junior Jamboree, and the Puppet Playhouse were all broadcast during the early evening hours (Grossman, 1987). Several have speculated that the television industry used children’s programming as a way of introducing television into the home (Melody & Ehrlich, 1974; Turow, 1981) and, certainly, using these kinds of programs in the early evening, family hours, would be a way to do so.⁶ In addition, Palmer (1988) presented us with three reasons early television broadcasters “eagerly” programmed for children: (a) to attract young families, (b) to fill otherwise useless hours with inexpensive programming, and (c) to demonstrate a public-service orientation.

The Research

The five earliest studies identified from the 1940s demonstrate that from the beginning questions addressed issues of media preference, social concerns, and health. According to Grossman (1987), much of the early criticism came from physicians concerned with the physical effects of this new medium. Symptoms ranged from “frogitis,” caused by children sitting in front of the television with their knees folded to the side; “TV bottom” or an ache in the tailbone caused by sitting too long; or “TV tummy,” which was the consequence of becoming too excited during action-adventure shows. One of the earliest research studies in this bibliography was on the potential of television to damage the eye (Rones, 1949). Of the five television studies, all conducted in 1949, the focus was on issues that reflect today’s concerns: television’s potential for social good or as a “cure” for juvenile delinquency (Hutchinson, 1949; Riley, Cantwell, & Ruttiger, 1949) and television’s relationship to education (Lewis, 1949; Rehage, 1949). They were found in publications as diverse as Sight Saving Research, Public Opinion Quarterly, and The Elementary School Journal.

SELLING TELEVISIONS: THE 1950s

During this decade, the postwar baby boom was making its way through the educational system, teens were becoming identified as a consumer market, and experts like Dr. Spock were encouraging parents to allow their children more freedom and responsibility (Mintz, 2004; Pecora, 1998).

Television came of age in the 1950s with four national networks: DuMont, ABC, CBS, and NBC, although DuMont folded by 1955. Initially, a freeze on license applications imposed between 1948 and 1952 kept the medium from growing until issues such as interference were sorted out. Once they were, television quickly became a part of the American landscape. Witty (1966) reported that in the Chicago area, in 1949 and 1950, 43% of the children had a television set in their home; by 1959, 99% had a television. It had become the leisure activity of choice for families and children. Radio responded by changing formats because many radio programs, including children’s shows, made the exodus to television.

The 1950s were called, by some, the golden age of children’s television because of the quantity and quality of programming available. During the 1950s, children’s television programming went from 2.5 hours per week to a high of 37 hours in 1956 on the three national networks (Shelby, 1964, p. 248).⁷ In a comprehensive study of children’s programming Turow (1981) demonstrated a shift in the number of hours of programming from 10 programs in 1948–49 with an average of 20 programs from 1950 through 1959.

During the first part of the 1950s programming was still found during the lunch hour, after school, or in the early evening, but by the end of the decade Saturday morning was becoming the daypart of choice for children. While television was young, local programming featuring Uncle Bobs and Captain Neds was cheap and easy to produce. Eventually, economies of scale made national network distribution and syndication a more viable option. By 1957, two of the three networks (CBS and NBC) had begun to program children’s entertainment on a more competitive basis and moved it from the evening hours to Saturday morning (Grossman, 1987). Beginning at 9:30 a.m., CBS carried Captain Kangaroo, Mighty Mouse, several variety programs, and the Lone Ranger. NBC, in the meantime, had Howdy Doody, Gumby, and several action-adventure shows (Grossman, 1987). According to Davis (1995), Fury, one of the action-adventure shows on NBC Saturday morning was one of the first action-adventure shows to encourage prosocial themes. Although most of these programs were aimed at the younger child, American Ba...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• LEA’s Communication Series
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Series Foreword
• Foreword
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 The Changing Nature of Children’s Television: Fifty Years of Research
• 2 From Attention to Comprehension: How Children Watch and Learn From Television
• 3 The Impact of Television on Cognitive Development and Educational Achievement
• 4 Television, Social Roles, and Marginality: Portrayals of the Past and Images for the Future
• 5 Is Television Healthy? The Medical Perspective
• 6 Advertising and Consumer Development
• 7 TV Violence: Research and Controversy
• 8 Health, Drugs, and Values
• Bibliography 1949 to 2005