Parental Mediation of Children's Viewing in a Changing Television Environment

For 25 years, Israeli television operated as a virtual monopoly, with one single channel shared by Educational TV and the Public Broadcasting Authority. Young viewers were exposed to non‐commercial quality programs primarily geared for children. The introduction of cable television challenges the ways parents control their children's viewing and fills the role of mediators between television and the child. This study is based on two surveys among parents of Israeli children aged 2‐8. The first was conducted with 537 parents in 1989, prior to the introduction of cable TV, and the second with 552 parents who had cable in 1993, when cable TV penetrated half of all Israeli homes. The results indicate that the introduction of cable TV changed strategies of parental control and mediation and parents’ assessment of television's influence on children. Active parental mediation was closely related to the attribution of learning values to children's viewing and to gratifications attributed to educational television broadcasts. Loosening of control and allowance for independent children's viewing was closely related to the attribution of entertainment value to children's viewing and to viewing of cable television.     

Critical Viewing of Television News: the impact of a Dutch schools television project

Using a quasi‐experimental pretest‐posttest control group design, the study investigated the educational effects of a six‐programme schools television series designed to teach children aged 10‐12 that television news broadcasts give a selective and thus subjective and incomplete impression of the news. Results indicated that the schools television series led to an increase in children's knowledge of the selection processes involved in the production of news programmes, and an increase in children's proficiency in recognizing the moments of selection in news items. However, the television series did not result in a decrease in the level of credibility children attribute to television news broadcasts. The reason for the latter finding probably is that the series showed that the makers of news programmes are conscious of the selection processes involved in making news programmes and do their utmost to make the choices in the most responsible way possible. As a result, the series may have unintentionally created the impression that the problem of selectivity can be satisfactorily solved.     

Teaching Children to Evaluate Television Violence Critically: the impact of a Dutch schools television project

Using a quasi‐experimental pretest‐posttest control group design, the study investigated the educational effects of a six‐programme schools television series designed to encourage children aged 10‐12 to become more discriminating consumers of violent television crime series. Results indicated that the schools television project led to an increase in factual knowledge of differences between violence as depicted in crime series and real‐life violence, and a decrease in the perceived realism of violent television programmes. Children reacted very positively to the schools broadcasts and found them instructive and useful. Teachers reacted positively to the broadcasts and the related materials (student workbook and teacher's manual) that accompanied the programmes.     

Primary Telesoftware

The Telesoftware and Education Project, which was set up in 1980 by the BBC, the IBA and Brighton Polytechnic, demonstrated the feasibility of using broadcast transmissions to distribute computer programs as teletext pages, to be downloaded (i.e. recorded) onto a microcomputer in school. The success of the project led to the setting up of a Telesoftware and Primary Education Project, to distribute software to the area of education in which programming expertise is least often available. Telesoftware is not only a means of distributing stand‐alone software but can also be coupled with schools’ broadcasts and can read relevant information from any page of teletext, providing an educational television ‘package’. The project provides a link between schools and programmers and functions as a pre‐ and post‐broadcast evaluation team. The initial feedback from schools has been very positive and it is hoped that the broadcasting of high quality, relevant telesoftware will be a useful TV service in the future.     

Engineering Studies at the Open University

Over the first 25 years of its existence, the Open University has developed a range of high‐quality courses in engineering subjects. Printed texts are complemented by radio and television broadcasts, audio‐ and video‐cassettes, home experiment equipment, computing packages and laboratory‐based summer schools. Recent developments using new technologies are outlined.     

TV's distorted vision of poverty

Avoiding almost entirely the depiction of poverty during prime‐time broadcasts, television networks present a sentimentalized vision of economic deprivation that omits or minimizes hardship while idealizing the supposed benefits of a spartan way of life. Much happier than the harried members of middle‐ and upper‐income groups, poor and working people on television seldom strive against their economic fates or against the system. Conclusions are based on a monitoring of prime‐time entertainment broadcast by the three commercial networks during “ratings month.”     

Interpretative Responses to English Educational Television

The paper is concerned with the need to stimulate and evaluate pupils’ responses to educational television broadcasts in English. In particular, it presents a comparative assessment of written follow‐up work during a series of broadcasts. Case study methods are used within one comprehensive school and involve 49 15‐year‐old pupils. Results suggest that those pupils consistently engaging in small‐group discussion are likely to produce better written work and to develop greater independence in formulating their ideas.     

Research into School Television

In the field of research into school television there exists at present no adequate overall grasp of the aims that should be set. I am referring here mainly to public television broadcasts for schools. Admittedly a great number of starts have been made in Europe; there have been many experiments concerning school television broadcasts and there have been a good many theoretical discussions—but as a whole the situation is far from satisfactory.     

THE ‘ACTIVE’ TELEVISION VIEWER SOME PRELIMINARY DEFINITIONS OF CONCEPTS AND MEASURES

This note summarises the main points that have arisen from the first phase of the Active Audience project, which the Centre for Television Research has undertaken with sponsorship from the BBC. This research has been designed to look at the nature of the television audience not in the usual way of counting heads and noting down who watches what, but in terms of why people watch television and how they respond to what they are being offered. Essentially this project is exploratory and represents an effort to analyse and understand the experience of the audience with television from two points of view. Firstly, by studying the motivation of the audience to watch television, as shown from the expectations different people attach to their viewing; and secondly, by concentrating more specifically on the perception and interpretation of the broadcast material which may determine programme preferences and strengthen or weaken the motivation of the audience to watch television.

These two ways of looking at television, that is from a ‘general motivation’ and a ‘perception and meaning’ angle, have been explored during the initial phase of the research, using the ‘family case‐study’ method. This involved the in‐depth study of a small number of individuals in their family context, by means of intensive repeated interviewing about their TV viewing and their life‐style more generally. The conducted case‐studies provided many insights of the role and significance of television within different styles of life and pointed to a number of practical implications for broadcasters, concerning both programme‐making and programme‐planning.     

Roles and characteristics of television and some implications for distance learning

The Open University has a unique partnership with the BBC. The BBC produces television, radio and audio‐cassette material in conjunction with Open University academic and other course design staff. Producers are full members of course teams. The Government, through its grant to the University, pays the full cost of the BBC's services to the University. The BBC has set up a department (BBC/OUP) specifically to provide services to the Open University. In Autumn, 1981, a brand‐new, £5½ million purpose‐built studio complex became operational on the University campus, and is managed by the BBC on the University's behalf. Currently, over 1,500 Open University television programmes are transmitted each year on the BBC's national television networks.

The University funds a small research group to investigate the use of audio‐visual media in the University. The research group carries out studies of programme utilisation across the 140 different courses, to assist with the planning and allocation of production and transmission resources. It also carries out more detailed research into individual programmes and course strategies for using television. More recently, the research group has been paying particular actention to how students learn from television. This paper explores some recent theory, and research developments on the role and character of television, and its impact on learning in distance education.     

电视研究中民族志法的运用

电视一诞生就受到人类的关注和研究,对电视研究最早也最成功的是美国,美国经过几十年的研究已然形成比较稳定的研究社群,我国对电视的研究要晚于西方。电视研究自上世纪70年代以来走向质化研究。,采用民族志研究方法来研究电视与社会的发展与变迁,是电视研究的人类学取向。     

Educational Television as Part of a Learning Environment: dilemmas for the Dutch Open School broadcasts

What to do if you want to make an educational programme for 40% of the population and only 2% of them are watching? You can choose between giving up and a total face‐lift. The makers of the thematic educational broadcasts for Dutch television (TELEAC) chose to renew their product. The research activities reported here were undertaken to support the process of redesigning the programme through construction principles that can help to improve thematic educational television directed at independent learning. Three investigations were carried out: consultation with experts in the field of education, mass communication, and television programme design; consultation with educationally related groups; consultation with the audience at home. The results were interpreted in the light of an educational theory of self‐directed adult learning to produce proposals and suggestions on four main topics: context and image; content; form; and appeal to the audience     

MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE: A STUDY IN AUDIENCE REACTION

In the light of the Children's Television Workshop research‐guided productions of Sesame Street and The Electric Company, relatively inexpensive production styles such as camera in the back of a classroom and the simple studio set with the camera on the teacher have drawn harsh criticism. A theoretical basis for this criticism has been that the available audiovisual message capacity is not being used to its full potential, particularly the visual portion, in the simpler, teacher‐centred styles.

Recent programming by TV College of the City Colleges of Chicago presented an opportunity to conduct an evaluation of two distinctly different instructional television production styles for adult open learning students. In this research a Miami‐Dade (Florida) Community College documentary film program which was part of the 30‐program series Man and Environment (M&E;) was compared with a program locally produced by TV College (TVC) which was broadcast back‐to‐back with the M&E program. This programing was part of the Miami‐Dade instructional design for the television course in Environmental Science

The M&E program. Individual Maladjustment, contains a wide variety of filmed sequences ‐‐ dramatic sequences, animated filmographs combining old photographs and newsreels, and man‐in‐the‐street interviews ‐‐ including specially filmed as well as stock footage from a variety of locations in the United States and the world. The voice‐over narration was professionally done and designed to integrate with the accompanying textbook. Some sequences contained synchronized sound. Music and sound effects combined with the picture to form a high quality documentary format program. The cost was estimated at S1,000 per minute     

Language,Mathematics and Educational Television in Infants' Schools

Educational Television language series are used extensively by infants' schools teachers, but there is insufficient evidence to suggest that they are incorporated into the curriculum or that their use abides by a school's language policy. A survey of over 400 teachers indicates that the teachers' criterion for usefulness seems to be the scope which a programme offers for follow‐up, particularly for discussion and phonic training in the teaching of reading. Similarly, there is little evidence of effective use of mathematics series; follow‐up and children's enjoyment of broadcasts seem to be the emphasis. Many teachers feel that it is difficult to present aspects of mathematics on television when children vary widely in their levels of mathematical development. Others teachers follow a mathematics scheme, in which television is irrelevant. The habit of whole classes of infants' school children watching language and mathematics broadcasts is not in keeping with primary school principles. Most infants' schoolteachers appear to use the programmes as a means of direct teaching to the class at the expense of children's real life experiences. Neither do the series in their present forms appear to be flexible enough to cater for the individuality of young children. Although these factors relate to educational television, they reveal a lack of flexibility in much infants' school practice, a charge which is not often levelled at infants' schools in this country.     

Educational Television in Israel: spotlight on the future

The author was based at the Educational Television Centre in Tel‐Aviv with a remit to study the development of educational television in Israel from its inception in 1966. The article briefly discusses the political and technological factors which led to the development of an educational television channel in Israel. At that time television in Israel consisted solely of educational television broadcasts in the mornings and afternoons. This was extended when the Israeli Broadcasting Authority started to broadcast on the one Israeli channel in the evening slot. The article concentrates on the recent development of educational television and its bid for a new niche in the constellation of Israeli broadcasting. Inevitably the development and future of educational broadcasting is intimately linked with Israel's religious and political schisms and its military and cultural preoccupations. At the moment Israel still only has one television channel, although test programming has been piloted on a second channel. This article explores the future options open to the Educational Television Centre in the context of satellite and cable broadcasting and the development of a second channel. Evidently the factors affecting the future of broadcasting in Israel are not dissimiliar from those which now face the UK, given the publication of the 1988 White Paper on Broadcasting     

论我国《广播电视法》的制定

《广播电视法》的制定应当着眼于鼓励和规范广播电视媒体之间的良性竞争,对有线电视法、无线电视法、卫星电视法进行系统的整合。实行广播电视节目分级制,并建立独立、公平的监督机构,保证我国广播电视事业的蓬勃发展。     

Infant Gaze Following During Parent–Infant Coviewing of Baby Videos

A total of 122 parent–infant dyads were observed as they watched a familiar or novel infant‐directed video in a laboratory setting. Infants were between 12–15 and 18–21 months old. Infants were more likely to look toward the TV immediately following their parents' look toward the TV. This apparent social influence on infant looking at television was not solely due to the common influence of the television program on looking behavior. Moreover, infant looks that were preceded by parent looks tended to be longer in length than those that were not preceded by parent looks, suggesting that infants assign greater value to media content attended to by their parents. Thus, parental patterns of attention to television may influence early viewing behavior.     

简述中国电视观念的沿革

中国电视在半个世纪的发展过程中,观念历经变革。电视本体从制作人时代到制片人时代再到策划人时代的步步演进,推动了电视节目形式单个节目—栏目化—频道化的步步递进,受众的地位也由被动转为主动。这些生动鲜活的观念,指导着电视实践的推进和发展。     

从影视竞争到影视合流

电视自诞生以来,一直与电影进行着竞争。刚开始由于多种原因,电视处于劣势,逐渐地电视占了上风,抢走了电影的绝大部分观众。与此同时,电影与电视正在走向合流,主要体现在制作、传播以及机构、业务、人员、资金等方面。但是影视在合流的同时,由于之间的差异性和自身的独特性,它们还将长期共存。