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Audience research on family television viewing flourished in the 1980s and 1990s. These studies highlighted watching television as a family as a valuable family routine, structuring the rhythm of daily life and generating family harmony. Ever since, we have witnessed changes in both family structures and media structures, which have affected the ways television is consumed within the household. This begs the question whether earlier findings considering family closeness still hold up. Therefore, this study conducted a cross-sectional survey among a sample of 691 Belgian individuals, nested in 288 families. Drawing upon insights from literature on family rituals and media generations, the results of this study indicate that despite a robust prevalence of family viewing, alternative social patterns emerge coinciding with the appropriation of screen technologies beyond living room television. Further analysis reveals that deviations from family viewing are associated with lower closeness between generations. However, younger generations watching together do report higher levels of closeness with their generational counterparts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Television use by husbands, wives, and children is analyzed in an economic model using multiple regression. The findings show education to be the most important determinant of television use. It was also found that income decreases adults', but increases children's, television use; that number and age of siblings affects children's television use nonlinearly; and that number of television sets is not important in determining television use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time use is described for adults who recorded no television viewing in diaries kept in conjunction with the 1975-76 University of Michigan national probability survey on time use. Results show nonviewers more active than viewers in almost all forms of activity involving work, child rearing, recreation, personal care, education, and social interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A model of consumer socialization is developed and tested. The development of the model is guided by theoretical notions and empirical findings drawn from various disciplinary areas, and the model is tested using two-stage least squares. The empirical results presented contribute to the understanding of the influence of television, family, and peers on adolescent consumer learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development of classification systems of television programs has been a major interest to marketing researchers as well as networks. Past attempts at deriving classification systems utilized either viewing behavior data [4, 5] or program preference data [6]. But, these studies had not taken into account the effects of prior knowledge about television viewing as it relates to the audience characteristics or television scheduling. Frank et al. [2] developed a methodology based on regression to correct for this deficiency in previous research and employed it for developing program types with use of preference data from TvQ for a period of three years. This methodology encountered Ehrenberg's criticism of previous research [1].
This article is a replication of the study by Frank et al. [2] using the television viewing behavior data and the same methodology. The results support the contention that the previously developed typologies of television programs are largely determined by prior knowledge variables, namely, individual's background characteristics and program scheduling variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views on how television (TV) has influenced the family life in Italy. Topics discussed include how television broadcasting revolution affected domestic relations in the country; the views of Catholic Church that the television has created an atmosphere of materialism, of conceit and hedonism; and how TV profoundly changed social life and the lifestyles of the Italians.

The present article addresses how stereotyped constructions of migrants' television behaviour should be contrasted with empirical investigations into the perceptions and articulated practices of migrants themselves. In order to do this, the article explores how 20 migrant households in Norway make sense of television and TV-related activities in their everyday lives. The analysis, employing the domestication theoretical framework, reveals that TV consumption is a multi-faceted and situationally contingent phenomenon. The "practicing of television" goes beyond the mere viewing of programmes based on ethnic origin. Although transnational broadcasts are important, they are neither uncritically domesticated nor sufficient in creating a sense of stability and belonging for migrant families. Rather, it is television as a total experience that proves to be a crucial element in home construction. The domestication theory offers an analytical framework that allows for the dynamics of household relations to be properly articulated, including the embedding of television within household moral economies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents criticism on the 2005 reboot of television (TV) program "Doctor Who." It explores the two competing models of sexuality and the child such as one which emphasizes collective family viewership and one which separately addresses child and adult viewers. It also examines how the TV program creates images of the family in the children's culture.

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate television viewing habits of children from low-income families, their consumption of fruits, vegetables and snacks, as well as their spending habits. Design/methodology/approach – 11 focus groups were conducted with 54 public school students aged seven to ten years, divided by sex and age. Transcription of the discussions was processed by content analysis. Family income was indirectly assessed through classification of parents' occupations. Findings – The habit of watching television was very present in the students' routines, as was eating in front of the television set. Eating fruits and vegetables was a habit, but frequent consumption of snack foods was also reported. Students had money of their own to spend independently and did it mostly on snacks. Parental interference over their habits was not perceived by the students. Television watching was a regular activity not only for the children, but also for their families. Even though research design could not establish a causal relationship, consumption and acquisition of unhealthy food items was routine, as well as watching television. Research limitations/implications – Results are of local nature and findings may differ from those of other regions or countries. Also, students were conveniently selected, and as volunteers they may have been more likely to have an interest in matters related to nutrition, or could have misreported their eating behaviours to be more socially desirable than they actually were. Originality/value – Qualitative investigation regarding television viewing habits, food choices and purchases of Brazilian low-income children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We investigated how exposure to media violence and family conflict affects adolescents' subsequent aggressive behavior. We expected a double dose effect, meaning that high media violence exposure would lead to higher levels of aggression for adolescents in high conflict families compared to low conflict families. A total of 499 adolescents (aged 10 to 14, 48% girls) participated in a two-wave longitudinal survey (4-month interval). Survey questions assessed their exposure to violence on television and in electronic games, family conflict, and aggressive behavior. Analyses revealed a significant interaction between media violence and family conflict. In families with higher conflict, higher media violence exposure was related to increased subsequent aggression. This study is the first to show a double dose effect of media violence and family conflict on adolescents' aggression. These findings underscore the important role of the family in shaping the effects of adolescents' media use on their social development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the relational maintenance strategies used to negotiate autonomy and connectedness in father–child relationships portrayed in adolescent television dramas. Episodes of 3 programs—Everwood, Seventh Heaven, and Veronica Mars—were coded for relational maintenance behaviors. Sharing information about activities, manipulating physical distance, and sharing emotions were among the most frequently occurring behaviors. Because television can have a socializing effect on viewers, studying the maintenance strategies used in popular adolescent television dramas can increase understanding of 1 element of adolescent viewer socialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores the idea that the popular media depiction of a nuclear family in 1950s America has led to televised addiction interventions, which use dated and discredited therapeutic practices. The author provides a cultural history explaining how domestic problems were brought into the public sphere for entertainment purposes starting in the early 1970s. She argues that because psychological professionals became engaged in trying to uphold the traditional nuclear family, addiction intervention arose. She explains that addiction intervention on television is focused on providing drama, not education, does little to help families, and negatively affects the field of psychology.

An essay on the politics of literacy and family in the television (TV) program "Gilmore Girls" is presented. It analyzes the literacy practices of Rory Gilmore, one of the main characters in the TV program. It examines the tradition notions of gender and class differences and its influence on values and literacy practices.

In the period since the First World War both conflict and remembrance have been experienced at a personal level and through a range of media. This article discusses the growing significance of broadcast remembrance texts focusing upon three recent television texts: The Fallen (BBC 2) (Matthews, 2008), My Boy Jack (ITV) (Kirk, 2007) and My Family at War (BBC 1) (Austin, 2008). It is suggested that personalization, celebrity and domesticity within television remembrance enables mediated remembrance to serve as an interface between the personal, domestic, unofficial and often feminized sides of remembrance and its national and official role. These texts both emphasize and legitimate the private and domestic sides of grief by portraying them within the public sphere. In so doing they engage with many who may feel excluded from traditional remembrance events and elicit an empathy for the bereaved which is removed from any support for conflicts and war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several studies have shown television's capacity for social learning and the special influence that characters have over the identity configuration of younger viewers. At the same time, the audience data indicate that since television's beginnings, children have been interested in adult or family programmes, to which they dedicate the same or more attention than to children programming. In this article, we offer the results of a content analysis in which we have analysed main and secondary protagonists in the national series with the best children audience results. The analysis is focused on sociodemographic and psycho-social characteristics of the actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The results of a study on the use of television in the educational communities of middle-class elementary schools in the city of Buenos Aires are presented in this article. The objectives were to describe the relationships that emerge when speaking with parents, teachers and students about what television is and how it is used by middle-class children in Buenos Aires. A qualitative method was employed and 63 three in-depth interviews were conducted with teachers, parents, and fourth and fifth grade pupils (ages nine and ten). Afterwards, their replies were categorized for analysis. Among the conclusions, it was found that educators (parents and teachers) are unable to agree on the educational influence television has on children. Parents feel responsible for their children's media consumption, and children consume a large quantity of programs for adults. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents an ethnographic study on how media such as television can connect with English language and literacy practices among Sudanese refugees in Michigan. The study uses data which includes interviews, participation, and collection of artifacts, with emphasis on television events as units of analysis. Results show that television offers important cultural connections with the beliefs, values, and attitudes of the participants with regards to their Sudanese heritage. It is inferred that television offers development of real-world literacy practice and an important resource for potential English language abilities of children and adults.

The article examines the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) television program "Who Do You Think You Are" (WDYTYA) as a form of life writing. According to the author, the program challenges the notion of genealogy as a private, personal enterprise by turning individuals' searches for their family history into publicly interesting stories. It is suggested that while WDYTYA acknowledges the constructed nature of personal and family identity, it overstates the simplicity of genealogical work. Topics discussed include biogravision, the exhibition "Who Do You Think You Are Live 2010," and self-perception.

It is widely argued that the rise of multichannel television services, together with other 'new media,' have led to a decline in family television viewing and the emergence of more individualized media culture within the household. This study, however, argues that family viewing can be treated as a variable shaping people's use and evaluations of the medium. More specifically, the survey data analysis focuses on how individuals' perceptions of family television viewing preferences influence their consumption and evaluation of both conventional mass broadcast television and multichannel television services in Hong Kong. The results show that consumption and evaluation of mass broadcast television relate positively to preference for family viewing and negatively to perceived family television preference heterogeneity. Meanwhile, multichannel television service subscription relates positively to perceived family television preference heterogeneity. Yet actual consumption and evaluation of the medium remains positively related to preference for family viewing, thus pointing towards the dual nature of the medium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article offers an analysis of the New Zealand eco-makeover program, WA$TED! It outlines how eco-makeover programs are an emerging sub-genre of the makeover phenomenon of lifestyle television where people and homes are subject to transformation by lifestyle experts, culminating in the revelation of the transformation at the end of the program. The article argues that the featured families in WA$TED! experience “everyday epiphanies” where they learn about their implication in existing environmental networks and they are ushered into new, more environmentally friendly networks. Drawing on actor-network theory, the article deconstructs the featured environmental networks, examining the roles of the program hosts, the transformations in the subjectivities of family members, and the functions of everyday household technologies and objects. The article argues that the significance of the program resides in the way the revelations make visible previously concealed linkages between families, everyday objects and practices, and the broader social and environmental domain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although long observed that television is a suburban medium, British television frequently explores the spaces beyond the suburbs. Coast and Countryfile, enjoying large audiences, are in fact at the apex of a whole practice of programme making which includes other examples like Britain from Above. In asking whether there is a geography genre in British television, this article argues that the visibility of these programmes merges into a more general investment in imagining the hinterland across a range of programmes from rural dramas to local news, while adopting standard magazine or presenter based formats. Exploring the role of this imagination, it asks about geographical preoccupations and highlights assumptions about the cultural affiliations and identities of the suburban television audience. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how the elderly people are portrayed in the various types of media in India. It says that a crucial role is played by mass media in defining cultural contours, which include the roles expected from older persons and the conceptions of aging. According to the author, the elderly are projected as valuable members of the Indian family in television commercials while Indian films depict their health vulnerabilities in terms of medication and ailments. The rate of elderly persons who play major characters in films is also discussed.

This study examines the prevalence and nature of physical affection between television family members featured in the understudied area of US children's television programming. Affection is one of six fundamental human needs and a primary communication behavior. Television serves as a primary socialization factor for young children who can model many viewed behaviors. Results show that physical affection among family members is common in such programming and free of gender differences in terms of initiating affection. As for receiving affection, however, male family members received, on average, significantly more affection than female members. Additional differences and patterns of initiation and reception emerge when family position is analyzed. Sons receive more affection from parents than daughters, especially from mothers. Parents initiated affection toward their children far more frequently than children to parents and more often than toward their spouse. Brothers and sisters did not differ in the amount of initiating or receiving affection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the performance of shame in the context of the public visualizing of abject families on reality television from a psychocultural perspective. The relevance of a recently popular "governmentality perspective" is gestured towards, alongside an emphasis on the importance of taking television's psychosocial dimensions seriously. The essay attempts to provide a nuanced, psychocultural account of televisual "looking," which engages with both its ideological and affective elements. Parents are represented as in need of help, but the "help" offered by House of Tiny Tearaways, Supernanny, and Honey We're Killing the Kids is laden with shames and horrors that are as ideological as they are affective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background While excessive television viewing has been associated with negative outcomes in children's welfare, parental co-viewing has been suggested as an effective way to prevent these negative effects. The objective of the present study is to specify some social contexts of co-viewing and to assess whether co-viewing modifies the effects of media on children's TV-related fears. Methods The study is based on a representative random sample of 331 children aged 5-6 years. It is based on parental reports of children's TV-related fears and family television viewing practices. Results Parental co-viewing and discussion of television programmes with the child were found to be associated with higher rates of children's TV-related fears, high television exposure in general and watching adults' television programmes. The association between TV-related fears and co-viewing remained significant even after controlling for gender, maternal education, family income and the quantity and quality of television viewing. Co-viewing and TV-related discussions increased the risk for TV-related fears nearly fourfold (adjusted odds ratio 3.92, 95% confidence interval 1.37--11.17 and adjusted odds ratio 3.31, 95% confidence interval 1.33--8.20, respectively). Conclusions The findings suggest that co-viewing and discussing television programmes are more common in families where television exposure is high. Because both co-viewing and discussing television programmes were associated with higher fear scores regardless of the quantity and quality of television exposure, the research shows that in everyday life co-viewing may not be done in such a way that it leads to a reduction of children's fears. More studies are needed to explore the co-viewing practices of families in more detail. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents the author's views regarding the representation of the characters in the British television serial "Shameless." It says that the series uses genre to define the white working class family in the post-industrial period which was depicted by unemployment and deprivation and portrays the characters' lifestyle as an identity of the English people and their social condition in the national culture.

Abstract: In 2003, a new reality TV genre appeared on British public television built on the spectacle of the parenting of so-called disturbed or problem children. This paper focuses on The House of Tiny Tearaways, a programme in which three families are invited to reside in a specially designed house together with a resident clinical psychologist. Such a programme allows us to explore a range of issues, including (a) how a family assembles itself spatially and coordinates its activities across the lived architectures of the home; and (b) how a child is disciplined in and through the embodied activities, spatial formations and talk of the parents. The paper draws upon mediated discourse analysis and conversation analysis – inflected by contemporary understandings of discipline, space and place – in order to analyse the phenomenon of the ‘time-out’, a generalised ‘technique’ of parentcraft that is used to discipline young children who are misbehaving. Rather than debate the merits of the ‘time-out’ as an appropriate disciplinary instrument, this paper explores the local, emergent and negotiated accomplishment of disciplinary practices of temporal and spatial restraint that involve embodied (inter)action, furniture, objects, and the lived architecture of the domestic sphere. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In the present study a German-speaking scale for measuring parental mediation of television is tested and various factors influencing television mediation are investigated. 252 German-speaking Swiss parents of children aged 3 to 14 answered questions about their mediation behavior and possible determinants. The results confirm international research findings. Active and restrictive mediation as well as coviewing are identified as important mediation styles in German-speaking Switzerland. Though in detail the mediation styles show different determinant patterns, altogether parental attitudes toward television, family interaction patterns, and children's age prove to be central determinants of television mediation styles. Sociodemographic and structural factors seem to become less important. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this study we analysed the effects of parental social background and family composition on various types of parental media socialization. We employed the Family Survey Dutch Population 1998, 2000 and 2003 (N =2608), and analysed respondents’ reports of socialization practices in their parental home. Respondents from high-status families report more extensive parental media socialization in all highbrow and guidance activities. In contrast, a parental example of popular television viewing is reported less often by children from the higher social strata. Family composition also affects parental media socialization practices. Parental media guidance takes place less frequently in families that have experienced a divorce and in larger families. Finally, parental highbrow media consumption evidently causes more parental media guidance, therefore interpreting a substantial part of the effects of parental social background. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]