here is one thing to be said about violence on television

a lot of it.

there is

The reason violence abounds on the nighttime tube is a simple one — it plays well. In fact, it plays very well and that, of course, constitutes the bottom line of the network television industry.

reduce violence on television, but rather that the nation's viewers tired of them. In short, they no longer played.

The same fate will sooner or later befall the "Kojaks" and "Barettas" now enjoying a big numbers heyday. It very well might be that westerns will make a comeback, but whether there is a pounding of hooves across the small screen or not, some form of violenceoriented programming will make its mark with millions of viewers acrnce the country. That you can make book on.....

Television network programmers, no?

matter their standing in the particular communities they live in or how many Girl Scout cookies they buy, are con cerned primarily in their workaday world with the economics attendant to their business: Only off-handedly are they concerned with the creative or entertainment aspects.

It is the network programmers job to oversee the production of shows that will appeal to the largest possible number of viewers. Any artistic merits that such shows might contain are merely icing on the evening programming cake.

There is really no point in examining violence on television, unless the study is broadened to include those millions of Americans who nightly sit in front of their sets, not only soaking up the slam-

those shows which constitute the medium's "Murder Hours," wherein anything up to and including the dispatching of bodies to the nether world forms an integral part of programming. Their argument that such fare might lead to a desensitizing of human life values is not without merit.

It is undeniable that in any given week the nation's viewers are privy to dozens of homicides of every imaginable description and countless violent acts, such as slappings, shovings and the like. That is disturbing enough in itself, but there is something even more dreadful making its prime-time appearance of late.

That is, of course, the sicker adjunct

When the networks bowed to

What other reason, for example, pressure from antiviolence

could there be to explain the plethora of law and order shows that have.dominated the medium's prime-time hours the past few seasons? There is none.

Cops and robbers shows, whatever their violence quotient, have scored very

three years and will remain conspicu-

ously on the tube as long as they attract the mass audience.

groups and introduced new, less violent programs on Sat-

well with viewers for at least the past urday mornings, the ratings of all three networks began to decline rapidly.Children across the nation simply tuned out...

There are nearly two dozen law and order shows currently playing nightly between the hours of 9 and 11 and most of them are doing quite well at the living room box office. Some, so much so, that they are regulars in Mr. Nielsen's exclusive Top Ten Club.

That means that everybody is watching them —the Easterner, the the Easterner, the Westerner, the rich, the poor, the rural folk and the urban dweller of all socioeconomic backgrounds. It is virtually impossible to get big Nielsen numbers unless you mount a show that appeals to America's great cross sections as itemized above.

Violence on television is not something new, as many viewers think. To emphasize the point, let me remind those who hold such a belief that only a decade ago there was a score of westerns, with varying degrees of violence, riding nightly across the network range. The reason the oaters disappeared from the evening schedule had nothing to do with any concerted effort by groups, national or local in makeup, to

bang action shows, but in near worship of the sanitized violent fare.

To condemn violence on television out-of-hand is a specious action at best and a self-serving exercise in dishonesty at worst. Television is, above all else, merely a somewhat larger-than-life reflection of society, and the breast-beating among certain prominent societal members galls like wormwood.

This is not to denigrate the wellmeaning and thoroughly honest efforts of those who are genuinely concerned about the medium's propensity to dispense violence in abundance. It is merely to suggest that the issue in question is much larger than it appears

on a 21-inch television screen.

Even more to the point, let me concur with those who cite as specific examples

of pure and simple violence. Rape, for instance, both heterosexual and homosexual in nature, is invading prime-time television programming in seemingly every increasing story lines. Sadly enough, the depiction of this criminal activity is playing extremely well with large numbers of viewers across the land.

Over the past decade, there have been a number of studies made of the possible harmful effects violence on television might have on the populace. Some have been exhaustive and serious, while others have proved to be nothing less than silly in, design and execution. The most comprehensive done to date was conducted by the Surgeon General's office. Its conclusions were anything but conclusive.

A

fter several years of research and tons of testimony from expert and amateur student watchers of television, the best the Surgeon General could come up with was one paragraph which will stand for all time as a model of perfect equivocation. It read, and the quote is

verbatim:

"Violence on television can immediately or shortly thereafter induce mimicking or copying by some children and, under certain circumstances, instigate an increase in aggressive behavior. However, the evidence does not warrant the conclusion that television violence has an adverse effect on the majority of children."

That bit of mealy-mouthing on the Surgeon General's part, however, has not stifled, much less stopped, vocal outbursts against violence on television. In fact, just the contrary would appear to be true. Of late, a good number of respected psychiatrists and psychologists have made their views known and most of them agree with Dr. Eli Rubenstein, Professor of Psychiatry, New York State University at Stony Brook, L. I., who said:

"Some of our research suggests that watching a good deal of violence on television may desensitize people to real life values."

There are dissenters among the professorial ranks and their credentials are every bit as good as Rubenstein's. Two of the more prominent are Robert M. Kaplan, Professor of Psychology, California State University at San Diego, and Robert D. Singer, Professor of Psychology, University of California at Riverside. In a recent interview, they said:

"After reviewing 120 studies of violence on television, we have not found in

any of them sufficient proof of a direct connection between television violence and aggressive behavior.

"Too much of the research done to date has been conducted in the unrealistic settings of laboratories and the methodology employed is suspect. It would be far better for those engaged in such studies to turn their attention to economic, developmental, social and cultural factors in an attempt to find the true causes of violence.'

As the word may is included in Dr. Rubenstein's statement, it is difficult, if not altogether impossible, to place any