ABSTRACT
The first step in assessing the impact of televised health information is to obtain an accurate assessment of what information is currently being conveyed. In January 2003, Vicki Beck, the director of Hollywood, Health & Society (HH&S) at the University of Southern California’s Norman Lear Center, Sheila Murphy, and Michael Cody (faculty at the Annenberg School of Communication at USC) launched a pilot project to monitor the healthrelated content of popular prime-time television shows. Each spring season from 2003 to 2006 over two dozen of the most popular prime-time television shows among 18-49-year-old Hispanic, African American, and General (primarily Caucasian) audiences were content analyzed. In this chapter, we walk the reader through some of the key decisions made during the course of the Television Monitoring Project, as well as the rationale behind and consequences of each decision.
