Television: The Junior Season Opens

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Aggressive Behavior. The networks' programming has often been unfavorably compared with the widely acclaimed Sesame Street,* and increasingly criticized by parent groups like the Boston-based Action for Children's Television. One study of last spring's programming in the Boston area, commissioned by A.C.T., showed that more than half of all children's programs concerned crime, supernatural situations or characters in strife. One possible insight into the effect of too much video violence on children was more recently provided in a study by Psychologists Robert M. Liebert of the State University of New York and Robert A. Baron of Purdue University. Their conclusion: "The present entertainment offerings of the television medium may be contributing, in some measure, to the aggressive behavior of many normal children."

Such jargon-studded studies are admittedly inconclusive and vague, but the networks are eloquent with statements of their good intentions. ABC hosted a two-day conference on children's television. NBC's vice president for children's programming, George Heinemann, declared: "I'm going for the seven-to twelve-year-olds, to broaden their life experience, not just with facts but moral and ethical values too." But the networks have yet to live up to that pledge or to resolve what direction children's television should take. "We want to cooperate with educators," says ABC's Michael Eisner, 26, "but we do not want to be a school." He adds: "With programs like Make a Wish and You Are There and Curiosity Shop, we are satisfying our own guilt."

·Katie Kelly