Programming: Telling It Like It Isn't

The TV teen-ager used to be that nice adolescent next door, witness Sheila James in the Stu Erwin Show, Billy Gray in Father Knows Best, and Tony Dow in Leave It to Beaver. The neo-Penrod type was stereotyped by Ricky Nelson, who grew into and out of adolescence before the entire nation on The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.-

Now, despite a few holdouts (My Three Sons, Family Affair), kids on TV are pretty rotten. To Officer Pete Malloy of Adam-12, for example, a youth is the bearded hippie who shot Methedrine with his teen-age girl and accidentally gave her...