Newspaper Page Text
PAGE 2 — The Southern Cross, January 18,1973
Two Kid TV Groups Launch
Violence, Commercials Study
NEW YORK (CPF) - Two major
groups concerned with children’s
television have announced far-reaching
projects concerning two controversial
elements of children’s TV
commercials and violence.
Action for Children’s Television,
(A.C.T.), a mothers’ group that has
already had significant impact on the
kinds of commercials now seen on
children’s programs, has now released a
study showing how all commercials can
be eliminated from such programs by
1978.
The Children’s Television Workshop,
the firm that has produced Sesame
Street and The Electric Company, has
launched a project by which it hopes to
prove that violence is not necessary in
children’s programming to attract a
large audience.
“Children’s television programs on
commercial television could be aired
with no commericals in five to seven
years, without financial hardships for
broadcasters,” according to Dr. William
H. Melody, author of a report
commissioned by A.C.T. and titled,
“Children’s Television: Economics and
Public Policy.”
In his study, Dr. Melody, who is
associate professor of communications
economics in the Annenberg School of
Communications at the University of
Pennsylvania, reported that “a program
of alternative financing for children’s
programming could be established with
a few million dollars to begin the first
steps in a phased program.”
The A.C.T.-sponsored report was in
response to an earlier response by Dr.
Alan Pearce of the Federal
Communications Commission, who said
that an A.C.T. proposal to eliminate
commercials on children’s programs
would result in “serious financial loss to
all three networks.”
Dr. Melody retorts that it is possible
to replace commercial revenue with
other kinds of funding for the children’s
programs, among them:
Institutional advertising by
corporations or underwriting by major
companies or federal, state and local
governmental agencies.
He proposed a gradual phasing out of
commercials in children’s programs as
such funding becomes more available.
As a start, Dr. Melody suggested that
one hour a week of children’s
programming could be underwritten by
private industry or the government.
In examining the history of children’s
TV, Dr. Melody noted that during the
early years of television, as much as 42
percent of children’s programs were
aired without sponsorship.
“This was probably the only time in
the history of television when the
primary concern of the industry was
with programming that would appeal to
viewers rather than with what would
attract sponsors to television as a forum
for selling products,” Dr. Melody wrote
in his report.
He concluded that “the trend toward
profitable market segmentation of
children’s television is not likely to be
modified by good intentions or self
regulations,.. .It appears inevitable that
the presently operative economic forces
in the industry will work to make the
problems worse. Yet, the increased
profitability from children’s television
will make it even more difficult for
public policy makers to come to grips
with problems.”
The A.C.T. study was financed by a
grant from the Markle Foundation of
New York, and copies are available from
A.C.T. at 46 Austin Street, Newtonville,
Mass., 02160.
Meanwhile, the Children’s Television
Workshop has begun a research project
to discover whether children are just as
willing to watch non-violent programs as
violence-laden programs.
“It is widely assumed in the
commercial broadcasting industry today
that violence is a necessary ingredient to
attract and hold a mass TV audience,
but research in this area is sadly
lacking,” said Dr. Edward L. Palmer,
C.T.W. vice president for research.
“If non-violent material is attractive
to young people - as we have found
with Sesame Street and The Electric
Company - then it presumably could
sustain the audience commercial
programmers feel they need to survive
economically.”
The new research project, expected
to be completed in six months, will
employ such techniques as the
“distractor method,” in which a
researcher monitors a child’s attention
to a TV program while a slide projector
beside him clicks off a series of
potentially distracting images. The
researcher records those times when the
child’s attention shifts from the
televised material to the slides.
Dr. Palmer said that the simplest way
to test the effectiveness of violence in
holding an audience of children would
be to ban violent material from all
children’s television programs for a
specified amount of time to see whether
audiences fall away.
“Like TV cigarette commercials,
violent TV content is being kept on the
airwaves until somebody proves it
harmful,” he said. “I would like to see it
taken off the airwaves until somebody
can prove that it is necessary to children
and broadcasters.”
Pope Forms ‘Committee for Family
(Continued from Page 1)
them a bishop and the other a married
layman), a theologian (who is to be a
priest), a jurist (who is to be a married
layman), and a councilor and a
secretary, who are tp be a married,
layman and a married laywoman,
respectively.
The theologian named by Pope Paul
is Father Jan Visser, a Dutch
Redemptorist who teaches moral
theology at Rome’s Urban University,
for students from missionary countries.
the Vatican Laity Council, replied that
the Family Committee had been created
by the Pope and would work within the
limits of his teaching.
The i^hgr vice president is Bishop
Edouard Gagnon, a Sulpician who
resigned from the diocese of St. Paul,
Alta., last spring.
The committee will have a regular
meeting scheduled once a year. Its
headquarters are in the Palazzo San
Calisto, which is in Rome but is part of
the Vatican’s so-called extraterritorial
property.
Among the 18 consul tors of the
family committee are Bishop Ahr;
Patrick Keegan, a British bachelor; a
married woman obstetrician from the
Ivory Coast, in Africa; two married men
who are medical doctors; a married
woman judge of Rome’s court for
minors; a widow from Spain, and a
teacher, Brother Quentin Duffy, from
Australia.
COMFORTING EMBRACE -- Archbishop Philip policeman was killed during an exchange of gunfire
Hannan of New Orleans comforts Mrs. Louis J. Sirgo, between a sniper (or snipers) atop a downtown New
widow of Deputy Police Superintendent Louis Sirgo, Orleans motel and police on the ground. Six other
one of the three policemen slain by a sniper, following persons, including two more policemen and the sniper,
funeral services in New Orleans. In the foreground, one were also killed and 15 were injured in the tragedy,
of Mrs. Sirgo’s daughters wipes away tears. The (RNS Photo)
Council 631 to Honor Nuns
Father Visser was a member of the
commission instituted by Pope John
and expanded by Pope Paul during the
Second Vatican Council to study
questions of marriage and the family,
principally methods of regulating
conception.
He remained strongly opposed to
contraception throughout the
commission’s discussions, and was one
of the authors of the so-called minority
report, which argued against the
morality of contraception. This was the
stand adopted by Pope Paul in his 1968
encyclical Humanae Vitae.
One of the vice presidents, Prof.
Vittorio Bachelet, was aksed what stand
the new committee would take toward
the encyclical.
Bachelet, who heads Italy’s Catholic
Action organization and is a member of
Savannah Council no. 631, Knights of
Columbus will hold a special program
honoring the religious Sisters of the
Savannah area, Wednesday evening,
January 24, 1973, it was announced by
Lou Bergmann, Council Activities
Director of the downtown K of C unit.
Letters of invitations have gone out
to the twelve convents and religious
offices, inviting the Superioresses and
their communities, to this first of its
kind activity. Also invitations were
extended to the Sisters living in
residences apart from their
communities. Tlie replies to the
invitations indicate that the Nuns will
attend “En Masse”.
The evening’s activities will include a
delicious dinner served at 7:00 p.m. a
short formal program, and
entertainment.
The Council’s Grand Knight Joseph
F. Dyer will preside, and the Master of
Ceremonies will be “Big Bill”
Lieberinan of WBYG Radio.
Bergmann stated that he hoped this
would become an annual activity of the
council, looked forward to by the
Religious Sisters of Savannah, and well
attended by the K of C members and
their wives.
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SAVANNAH
‘Something Wrong,’ NCC Official
Says of Christian Unity Week
NEW YORK (NC) - “For the past
several years the Week of Prayer for
Christian Unity has been on the
decline,” according to Sister Ann
Patrick Ware, a Catholic staff member at
the National Council of Churches (NCC)
here.
The Christian Unity Week - Jan. 18
through Jan. 25 - was started in 1908
by the then-Episcopalian Society of the
Atonement, more commonly known as
the Graymoor Friars. In 1909 the
Atonement Friars and Sisters entered
the Catholic church as a group, and the
unity week they started gradually grew,
until today it is celebrated in most parts
of the world.
In the United States since the 1950’s
it has been cosponsored by the
Graymoors and the NCC’s Faith and
Order Commission.
“The week used to be celebrated
daily,” said Sister Ann Patrick, assistant
director of the commission. “But as far
as I can see, in most places it’s been
reduced to a single instance of
interested people gathering together.
“Something is wrong here.”
She attributed the decline in interest
to several factors:
- The feeling of many Christians
“that we seem to do our duty (for
Christian unity) by a once-a-year thing.”
- “The whole problem of formal
prayer” for many Christians today.
- The fact that “the newness of
ecumenical prayer meetings has worn
off for Catholics,” and that for
Protestants “the impetus for that which
came after the Second Vatican Council
is waning.”
She pointed out that the number of
unity week pamphlets ordered from the
Graymoors “has dropped significantly.”
Graymoor Father Edmund Delaney,
editor of the newsletter Ecumenical
Trends, admitted that there were signs
of lagging interest. “Orders for our
yearly pamphlet have dropped from
about a million three years ago to
around 500,000 this year,” he said.
But he denied that this alone
represented a decline in interest. In
many cases, he said, “people are making
up their own services” instead of using
the pamphlets.
Father Delaney said he felt that the
week of unity was “holding its own” in
terms of numbers participating. “But,”
he added, “given the number of
Christians in thiss country, there should
be 20 times as many.”
Father Delaney agreed that another
problem today might be prayer itself.
“It’s the whole idea of prayer. It got a
‘bad press’ and maybe it deserved it,” he
said.
For a long time, he said, “people felt
St. Mary holds undisputed possession
of first place in the boys division of
Savannah’s Parocial School League with
2 wins and no losses. In the girls division
Blessed Sacrament and St. James are
tied with one win and no losses, each
having been idle one of the previous
weekends.
In two very exciting games last
weekend Cathedral girls won over St.
Michael 16-14 in overtime and St. Mary
boys edged Sacred Heart 30-29.
Team standings
play are:
after 2 weekends <
Boys
WON
LOST
St. Mary
2
0
Blessed Sacrament
1
0
St. James
1
0
Cathedral
1
1
Nativity
1
1
Sacred Heart
0
2
St. Michael
0
2
they had to say ‘Hail Mary’s’ or
something out of a prayerbook, and
now they’ve rejected that. But in the
process a lot of people just forgot how
to pray. They’re more interested in
fellowship and action.”
Both Father Delaney and Sister Ann
Patrick cited the interfaith evangelical
effort of Key 73 as a sign of renewed
interest in religion.
“I think one of the biggest problems
in ecumenism is that Christians do not
often talk at the faith level,” said Sister
Ann Patrick.
“If the prayer thing were supported
by an ongoing grassroots discussion of
what faith means to them, we would
have a different situation,” sKe said.
“But that just doesn’t go on among
Christians.”
GIRLS
WON
LOST
Blessed Sacrament
1
0
St. James
1
0
Cathedral
1
1
Nativity
1
1
Sacred Heart
1
1
St. Mary
1
1
St. Michael
0
2
Games scheduled next weekend will
be played at Sacred Heart gym as
follows:
Saturday, January 20 at 2:00 P.M.
(Boys) Blessed Sacrament-Cathedral,
3:00 P.M. (Girls) Blessed Sacrament -
Cathedral.
On Sunday, January 21 at 1:00 P.M.
(Boys) Sacred Heart - St. Michael, 2:00
P.M. (Girls) Sacred Heart - St. Michael,
3:00 P.M. (Boys) St. James - St. Mary,
4:00 P.M. (Girls) St. James - St. Mary.
Sav. Parochial League