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CBS dismissed Belson's finding as adding "nothing of consequence" to the continuing debate on the issue. In response to Federal Trade Commission pressure and nationwide lobbying by groups like Action for Children's Television (ACT), the networks have launched a series of special dramas for children and reduced the number of week end ads by more than 40%. (Yachtsman and Atlanta Braves Owner Ted Turner has offered to subsidize Saturday children's programs on his own cable station, WTCG; they would run with no ads at all.)
An increasing number of studies suggest that the main danger of television may not be the message, but the medium itself, just looking at TV. In Bedford, Mass., Psychophysiologist Thomas Mulholland and Peter Crown, a professor of television and psychology at Hampshire College, have attached electrodes to the heads of children and adults as they watched TV. Mulholland thought that kids watching exciting shows would show high attention. To his surprise, the reverse proved true. While viewing TV, the subjects' output of alpha waves increased, indicating they were in a passive state, as if they were "just sitting quietly in the dark." The implication: TV may be a training course in the art of inattention.
Professors Jerome and Dorothy Singer, who head Yale University's Family Television Research Center, have been studying groups of several hundred three-and four-year-olds as they watch TV at home and in nursery school. They feel that heavy TV viewing stunts the growth of the imagination in the crucial ages between three and five. Such children make up fewer games and imaginary playmates.
In education, at least, some useful efforts are being made to live with the electronic menace, and even turn its endless noise, repetition, violence, materialism and banality to some advantage. All last year in Lansing, Mich., for example, High School Senior Eric Pretzlaff has been filling out his home "viewing log." His assignment is to take notes on the prime-time shows he sees with a view to improving his understanding of economics. After watching CBS's Alice, he noted that Alice's high standard of living is not consistent with her job as a waitress in a small restaurant. In Eric's class, Economics Teacher Rudy Johnson asks, "How much job security does a small restaurant owner like Mel (Alice's Boss) have?"And a student responds,"Not much, because small places like that go broke a lot." Smoothly, Johnson moves the discussion to the subject of extra risks that face small businesses throughout the business cycle.