Description of Children's Television Advertising

This paper is a report of two studies which were conducted on children's television. The first, "Saturday Children's Television," is a content analysis of programming and advertising matter on four Boston commercial TV stations. The second, "Romper Room, An Analysis," focuses on that program's commercial practices. The first study involved the video-taping of 18 3/4 hours of programming taken over four Saturdays. The analysis provides: (1) an overall description of program materials; (2) discussion of specific aspects of the programs (violence, laugh tracks, etc.); and (3) a statistical description and discussion of commercial messages. The "Romper Room" study was drawn from tapes of one week's programs, 45 minutes per day. The analysis centered around (1) the amount of program time spent in displaying brand name toys; (2) time devoted to other activities; (3) time devoted to commercial announcements; (4) extent to which hostess gave commercials herself; and (5) extent of advertising of Romper Room-Hasbro toys. This study revealed that 45 percent of the program for the week was devoted to commercial promotion of its own products. (Author/AJ)