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Research

Throughout its time, ACT commissioned multiple studies about children's health, advertising, and the climate of children's television, the findings of which all contributed to the organization's campaign for better programming.

In 1970, ACT commissioned two studies in order to urge the Federal Communications Commission to change the framework of children's programming. The first study, carried out by Mr. Ralph Jennings, was an analysis of "programming and advertising practices in television directed to children" and examined 54 stations in 13 top markets during the week of February 21st-27th, 1970. Jennings found that 33 of the 54 stations did not provide children's programming for a minimum of 14 hours, which was a request ACT had made from the Federal Communications Commission. The second study, conducted by Daniel Yankelovich Inc., focused on examining "mother's attitudes toward children's television programs and commercials" in the St. Louis, Omaha, and Denver areas. According to the Summer 1970 ACT Newsletter, "In one area 'all the mothers agreed that the whole thing would be better if there were no commercials at all' while in another area mothers said 'they don’t think that the sponsors are interested in providing good entertainment for children, they are just using a media for advertising."

In 1971, ACT submitted two major studies to the Federal Communications Commission, with the first being a study titled "Programming and Advertising Practices in Television Directed to Children", examined by Ralph M. Jennings and Carol J. Jennings and conducted by Joann Spiro of the ACT Executive Committee. This study focused on what was airing in 25 major markets during the FCC Composite Week between the 4 p.m. and 6 p.m. time slots, which is when most children are watching television. Like Jennings' findings from the year before, Spiro's major findings were that very few stations were running the requested 14 hours of children's television and that of the hours that were being showed, most of them were cartoons heavily laced with commercials. "The study also examined children’s programs on the network affiliated stations from 1948-1970. Early children’s television featured a diversity of program content and many live presentations. By the early 1960s, weekday children’s programs had diminished greatly, and no programs were being presented by the New York network affiliates during afternoon and evening hours. By the 1969-70 period, there was only one weekday children’s program, ‘Captain Kangaroo’ on WCBS-TV." (still need to paraphrase)

The second major study commissioned by ACT during 1971, 'Saturday Children's Television', was conducted by Dr. F. Earle Barcus, Communications Research Professor at Boston University, as well as two graduate students, Carol Springer and Gloria Chapman. "Dr. Barcus examined the programs minute by minute. Both program content and commercial content were carefully analyzed with emphasis on factual notation rather than subjective observation. Dr. Barcus pointed out: ‘The most depressing aspect of monitoring the program content was the lack of diversity among programs. On all stations we found the same repetitive stories in animated form.’ In detail the study found: - about three out of the 10 story segments were ‘saturated’ with violence, and 71 per cent had at least one instance of human violence, with or without the use of weapons; - programs were mostly animated with 62 per cent of all programming time being animated; - although in 52 per cent of the segments violence was directed at humans, only in 4 per cent did this result in death or injury. ‘Although there is an abundance of violence of all kinds one is left with the impression that, after all, violence is harmless since very little permanent damage is done to the characters,’ notes Dr. Barcus. Over half of all program time was concerned with crime, the supernatural and struggles between characters. Less than three per cent of the time dealt with such topics as family, religion, literature, and arts and crafts. Looking at the commercials, program breaks, and other non-program material, Dr. Barcus found: - about 23 per cent of the total time was devoted to non-program material, with almost 19 per cent commercial; - there were 406 commercial messages in 1125 minutes of total time studied, an average of one message every three minutes." (still need to paraphrase)