ABSTRACT
Among earliest systematic projects that integrated teaching critical TV viewing skills with formal curricular instruction, and which published detailed accounts, was the work directed by Milton E. Ploghoft and James A. Anderson (1981, 1982) in the early 1970s in Eugene, Oregon, and in East Syracuse, New York. Collaborating with school districts in those and several other cities, Ploghoft and Anderson (1982) identified what they called "receivership skills" that were central to:
identify and understand our own motives and purposes for attending to TV programs. They include our ability to interpret the influence of our
personal motives and purposes on the way we make sense of the messages we receive-that we may at the outset be more receptive to some content and less open to other ideas and images, (p. 5)
In a word, viewers were to become selective and discriminating consumers of television programming. Receivership skills, for them, involve comprehending overt and hidden meanings of messages by analyzing language and visual and aural images, to understand the intended audiences and the intent of the message. These skills include observing closely the details of program and advertising content and form, their sequence and relationship-including themes, values, motivating elements, plot-lines, characters and portrayals. To these observations is added reflective evaluation that distinguishes fact from opinion, and logical from affective appeals. Training in these skills includes study of the limitations inherent in media and in their messages ("distortions . . . which are contained in the methods selected to produce this message"). Finally, these CVS projects equip viewers with criteria pertaining to their own personal reaction to media messages, in order to help evaluate their own intended responses, motives, and personal value set on the media experience. All this helps viewers draw conclusions and make inferences. This leads to comprehending the medium's impact at both ends of the communication process-the influence of TV's institutional structure on the message, and the role of TV in the viewer's own life and thus that role's impact on the message as received. Anderson (1981) summarized the meaning and scope of this activity:
Receivership skills refers to those skills related to the assimilation and utilization of communication messages for some purposeful action. They involve the skillful collection, interpretation, testing and application of information regardless of medium of presentation. Skills of this nature have had an extensive educational history. Current educational thought treats them under the rubric of critical reading and critical thinking.
