Alcohol Portrayal on Television: A Study of Prime Time Television Programming

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1 Tiffany Stoddard Senior Thesis Prospectus Introduction Alcohol Portrayal on Television: A Study of Prime Time Television Programming It is well known that television is the central and most pervasive mass medium in American culture (Gerber, Gross, Morgan and Signorielli, 1980). Television also makes specific and measurable contributions to viewers' conceptions of reality..., these contributions relate both to the synthetic world television presents and to viewers' real life circumstances (Gerber et al., 1980). Cultivation analysis suggests that the amount of exposure to television is an important indicator of the strength of its contributions to ways of thinking and acting (Gerber et al., 1980). According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor, Americans spent 2.6 hours per day watching TV in This was the leisure activity that occupied the most time, accounting for about half of leisure time on average, for both men and women (American Time Use Survey, 2005). This is a pretty descent amount of time to be spent in front of the television and leads to the assumption that most Americans do spend their free time watching TV. Especially in contemporary times, it seem as if the television set has become a member of the family (Gerber et al., 1980). There are two or more televisions in almost every household in the United States. People have breakfast, lunch and dinner with their TV sets, some people even fall asleep watching TV. Television is looked to for just about anything, the news, fashion, weather, and people believe almost anything their TV's tell them. If so much reliance is paid to television, it has to be obvious that the messages television programs send out to the viewers, can make a big impact in the viewers' lives. One topic that can not be taken lightly on television is, alcohol portrayal. Because of the problems associated with alcohol, it is important to examine how it is portrayed in the media (Hundley, 1995), more precisely, the medium of television. Since so much free time is spent watching TV, the way in which alcohol consumption is portrayed on popular television programs and the messages about

2 the behaviors associated with alcohol, have become an important area for research. Literature Review It has been said that television plays an enormous role in shaping the perceptions of individuals social behaviors ( Mathios, Avery, Bisogni and Shanahan, 1998). According to Mathios et al., (1998), most households in the United States have their televisions on for 7.2 hours and spend about 3.4 hours actually watching them. The majority of the hours spent actually watching television is spent on watching an actual program. Since there are a lot of problems that can be associated with alcohol, it is necessary to look at how the media, specifically television, portrays portray alcohol and its effects on social behavior (Hundley, 1995). The overall knowledge about the effects of alcohol consumption has led to the development of studies on understanding the messages programs can convey about alcohol and its effects on behavior (Mathios et al., 1998). Many of the studies that have been conducted were on the impact of alcohol advertising. There haven t been as many studies to examine the impact of messages portrayed about alcohol in actual television programs (Mathios et al., 1998). That is why this topic is of such significance. Mathios, Avery, Bisogni, and Shanahan (1998) conducted a study to find the frequency of alcohol messages embedded in prime-time television (Mathios et al., 1998). The method that was used to conduct this examination was a sample that consisted of 276 programs airing during prime time (7:00pm to 11:00pm) on four major networks (NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX) during a week in the fall of 1994 and a week in the spring of 1995 (Mathios et al., 1998). A coding instrument was then used, which was divided into two parts, one part to find the manifest content and the second part to find the latent content (Mathios et al., 1998). Mathios (1998) and his colleagues define manifest content as...the systematic recording of messages of interest in programs to determine the frequency of images and messages. This analysis was used to evaluate the number of characters that were portrayed in relation to alcohol (Mathios et al., 1998). Latent content has to do with the underlying or hidden messages that might not be obvious to a regular person watching a program. Latent content analysis

3 was used to examine the personality traits associated with characters that were seen consuming or portraying an alcohol act (Mathios et al., 1998). Both the manifest content and the latent content that was examined, focused on adolescent characters. This study found that alcohol portrayal happened quite often during prime-time television watching, at least twice as much as any other food item (Mathios et al., 1998). The study also found that in the examined programs, alcohol use was applied to all types of characters. Adolescent alcohol use was portrayed in a negative way about 49 percent of the time and only 8 percent in a positive way (Lang, 1999). For adults over the age of 50, alcohol use was portrayed in a negative way about 6 percent of the time and 42 percent in a positive way (Lang, 1999). The researchers also suggested that future research should be conducted to interpret how viewers perceive alcohol messages and if the messages have an influence over the viewers behaviors (Mathios et al., 1998). Lang (1999) discussed the results that were achieved from the 276 prime-time television programs that Mathios and his team examined. The team found that alcohol was consumed 555 times in 224 hours of prime-time television (Lang, 1999). This is almost equal to 2.5 times an hour. It was also found that male characters equaled 66 percent of the alcohol scenes and women only 34 percent (Lang, 1999). Grube (1993) studied random three week samples of dramas and situation comedies to find how regularly alcohol consumption was portrayed on prime time television. The researchers also looked at two surveys and two other experimental studies to help with their results. The researchers found that in 1976, drinking portrayals were about five acts per hour and in 1984 more than ten drinking acts per hour (Grube, 1993). The study also found that alcohol portrayals seemed to decline from 1984 to about 1990 but then started to increase again during During this 1991 season, 13 percent of the episodes depicted positive consequences with drinking, 18 percent depicted negative consequences, and less than 12 percent contained warnings to characters about drinking in inappropriate or hazardous situations (Grube, 1993). The researchers of this study also suggested that further research was needed to determine the influence alcohol portrayals can have over young viewers (Grube, 1993).

4 Lowry (1981) attempted to provide a baseline of facts concerning the extent, nature and social functions of drinking on prime time network television. The study analyzed what added up to two weeks of prime-time programming and to answer nine separate research questions: 1.) How many drinking incidents were presented in total, by male vs. female drinkers, and by type of drink?, 2.) How many drinking incidents an hour were presented in total, by network, and in children s time vs. adult time?, 3.) What was the ratio of drinking incidents to drink refusals?, 4.) What was the ratio of social drinking to drinking alone?, 5.) What were the most frequent categories of social facilitation functions of drinking?, 6.) What were the most frequent categories of self-facilitation functions of drinking?, 7.) How many negative short-term consequences of drinking were presented?, 8.) What was the ratio of serious to comedy depictions of intoxication?, and 9.) How many negative long-term consequences of drinking were presented (Lowry, 1981)? The collection for this study came from all programs of ABC, CBS, and NBC networks that were broadcast in Philadelphia, PA during prime-time hours of 8pm to 11pm, for seven days a week, during February 15, 1979 to April 30, 1979 (Lowry, 1981). A sample was then created to break up the time to view each program which then resulted in 36 hours of NBC programs and 42 hours for ABC and CBS. All primary coding was performed by Lowry with the help of two assistants who were check-coders (Lowry, 1981). Results were then produced based on each research question that was stated above. It can be concluded from all the research questions put together that 201 drinking incidents involving liquor were found from 120 hours of programming (Lowry, 1981). These networks claimed to be following television code by accurately reflecting the drinking that is going on in society (Lowry, 1981), by showing programs that deal with alcohol in a laughing matter, not in a serious matter. According to Lowry (1981), this portrayal is not accurate because one out of ten adult drinkers are actually problem drinkers. Lowry (1981) concludes by saying that more research is needed to determine the social effects of alcohol consumption as portrayed on prime-time television. Hundley (1995) examined one particular season of the television series, Cheers, to investigate and identify how beer was naturalized through characters, dialogue, actions, consequences, and settings

5 (Hundley, 1995). In this essay, Hundley (1995) attempts to prove that Cheers naturalizes beer to make viewers believe that beer is not a harmful alcoholic drink, instead that beer is no more harmful than soda or water (Hundley, 1995). Hundley (1995) used three narrative strategies to carry out her critical approach to her analysis. The first naturalization strategy Hundley (1985) examined was humor. The logic of humor includes laughing at obstacles that stand in the way of masked desires which are ridiculously presented in excess (Hundley, 1995). She then states an example from an episode where one of the characters, Norm, entered a beer taste test and after 22 different samples, showed no effects on his behavior. Another humorous instrument that was looked at were quick oneliners that were thrown in throughout each episode pertaining to beer drinking (Hundley, 1995). The second naturalization strategy was camaraderie. She states that the Cheers bar is made out to be the perfect place for men to spend their free time. It s a place for any male to go and be amongst friends while drinking beer. This camaraderie makes beer drinking seem like a positive social activity. The last naturalization strategy that was looked at was detoxification. Beer as compared to other alcoholic beverages is shown as having little affect on the characters behaviors. If a character has a different type of alcoholic beverage, like wine or liquor, then they show signs of drunkenness. Hundley (1995), again states examples from episodes where this is apparent. She concludes with the cultivation theory that repeated exposure to consistent media portrayals and themes may influence viewers perceptions so that they become congruent with media portrayals (Hundley, 1995). Hundley reinforces that television plays an important role in American lives and therefore can be very persuasive. What all these articles and essay have in common is their ability to provide evidence to support the way in which alcohol is portrayed on prime-time television before the year Each article was able to establish a generally negative outlook on the way in which certain networks portray alcohol consumption. Meaning that the programs, themselves, tried to show alcohol consumption in a positive light. During the years in which these studies were conducted, that is the way alcohol consumption was portrayed. It was also unanimous among all the articles, that more social research is needed to discover the impact or influence of alcohol messages in prime-time television programs. The research

6 leaves two questions about contemporary television: Is the way in which alcohol use and addiction are portrayed on television more realistic today (Montero, 2002), and does an examination of more recent television programs show that the same pattern still exists? Methodology The sample population that will be used for this research consists of one week long programming on two major networks, ABC and CBS, during the prime-time hours of 8pm to 11pm. The programs will air the week of March 12, Approximately 33 different programs will be analyzed with two programs being the same but different episodes. The research will only focus on program content, no commercial advertising messages will be examined. The instruments that will be used to gather the data, are questionnaires. Two separate questionnaires were developed in order to get specific information from each program. The first questionnaire was designed to gather information about the particular program, such as, date, time of airing, major setting and topic themes of the programs, the second questionnaire was designed to examine the type of beverages that were being consumed by the characters, the characteristics of the characters consuming the beverages and the environment in which the beverages were being depicted. The characteristics that will be looked for are: age, gender, race, weight, and social status, as well as economic status. To ensure that the data that will be collected is accurate and that the separate questionnaires will be given close attention, each program will be viewed twice, once using the first questionnaire and then again using the second questionnaire. A third and final questionnaire will then be filled out after all the programs are viewed and both other questionnaires are completed. After each program is viewed and both questionnaires are filled out completely, the results of each will be tallied, compared and entered in the final questionnaire. The purpose of the first questionnaire is to find out specific information about the particular program to differentiate among the genres. The purpose of the second questionnaire is to go more in depth and focus on the characteristics of the characters and how they are portrayed when consuming alcoholic beverages compared to nonalcoholic beverages. The third questionnaires' purpose is to find the comparisons and/or differences

7 among all the programs in regards to the portrayal of alcohol. This research is intended to find if the way in which alcohol portrayal on contemporary television is in a more realistic manner than previous research has found and if not, do the same patterns of portrayal still exist. References Bureau of Labor Statistics of the US Department of Labor (July 2006). American Time Use Survey. Retrieved on date from: Gerbner, G., Gross, L., Morgan, M., & Signorielli, N. (1980). The mainstreaming of America: Violence profile no. 11. Journal of Communication, 30, p Grube, J. W. (1993). Alcohol portrayals and alcohol advertising on television. Alcohol Health & Research World, 17, p61. Hundley, Heather L. (Summer 1995). The naturalization of beer in Cheers. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, 39.

8 Lang, Susan. (Winter 1999). Prime-time TV s favorite beverage - alcohol. Human Ecology Forum, 27, p24. Lowry, Dennis T. (Spring 1981). Alcohol consumption patterns and consequences on prime time network TV. Journalism Quarterly, 58, p3-8. Mathios, A., Avery, R., Bisogni, C., Shanahan, J. (May 1998). Alcohol portrayal on prime-time television: manifest and latent messages. Journal of Studies on Alcohol, 59, pp305. Montero, Elvin. (March 2002). Television plays key role in shaping attitudes about addiction. Alcoholism & Drug Abuse Weekly, 14, p5.