ABSTRACT
The status of the viewer has been upgraded regularly during the course of communications research. The Israeli groups — some ten from each one of the four communities — were assembled by asking a host couple to invite two other couples from their intimate circle to view an episode of Dallas together, at home, at the time of its broadcast on Israeli television. An effort was made to achieve ethnic homogeneity within each group, and on the whole this was successful, partly because of a tendency to ethnic homogeneity within neighborhoods, partly because of the natural tendency to ethnic friendships, partly because the person who contacted the host couple made clear that the discussion would be conducted in the shared language of the group. The higher rate of making critical statements television programs among the western groups may reflect their greater experience with the medium, their greater training in criticism, or perhaps their greater familiarity with the society being portrayed.
