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AS VIEWED BY OUR WASHINGTON NEWS BUREAU
October 30, 196U
With much of the fire going out of equal time problems this week, broadcasters have more time to worry about Sen. Thomas A. Dodd's subcommittee report on the role of tv programing in juvenile delinquency.
The report repeatedly disclaims any intent to censor, but the demand for FCC to set up "realistic standards" in overall programing and programing for children in licensee reports hits close to program content. Also recommended: mandatory NAB membership and code adherence, with tougher sanctions for violation, all under FCC statutory surveillance.
The 77-page document, much leaked in advance, endorsed by seven (six Democrats, one Republican) out of nine members, was released last Tuesday on order of the chairman. Sen. Dodd's political rivals were unkind, enough to note that the long-delayed report came just before the final week of the senator's campaign for the Connecticut seat.
The report decides that there is a link between violence in actionfilm on tv, and juvenile delinquency. The finding is based on admittedly scarce and sporadic research efforts, and on the basis of the subcommittee's own hearings of 1961-2, and last July:
"It is the subcommittee's view that the excessive amount of televised crime, violence and brutality can and does contribute to the development of attitudes and actions in many young people which paves the way for delinquent behavior. " There are many qualifiers in the phrasing, but the conclusion is adamant: television is guilty, together with economic, psychological and sociological inpacts that produce aggression in both normal and disturbed youngsters.
The report blames networks for failure to safeguard juvenile viewers or provide good youthful programs in prime time and uses 1962 hearings and, the I963-6U programing as basis. It does not take into account changes made in the current programing season.
Much of the indictment at July, 196I|., hearings went to the new "sick, sick, sick" element the subcommittee said was added to network excesses in violence, via psychiatric shows, since abandoned. Nothing is said about the present reduction to minimum of even time-honored western, detective and adventure shows, in favor of a torrent of situation comedy. There are few blood-curdlers on the tv bill of fare, and fewer of the "tight-pants girls" and "sadists" blasted by the committee in its I962 hearings.
Although CBS, in the report, as in the July hearing, comes out best in eliminating violence since 1962, all nets are again hit for permitting reruns of violence -laden shows by syndication. They go on in prime time, the report says, when 20 million youngsters aged 17 and under are watching, between 7 and. 10 p.m.
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