ABSTRACT
Television violence increased sharply in all categories, including "family viewing" and children's program time on all three networks. The Violence Profile is a cluster of indices sensitive to different aspects of the nature and effects as well as the amount of violence on television. The latest Violence Index was based on the analysis of a fall 1976 sample of prime-time, late evening, and weekend daytime network television dramatic programming. The most elementary—and telling—social structure involved in a violence scenario is that of violents and victims. The CBS answering report of April 1977 deals with two of three areas of the annual Violence Profile. It discusses the Violence Index and the Risk Ratios showing relative levels of victimization. The explanation for the discrepancy between our results and those of CBS lies more in differences of methodology than of sampling. The fact is that the analysis of television content as reported in the Violence Index does not presume effects—useful or harmful.
