S. Robert Lichter, Linda S. Lichter, and Stanley Rothman

S. Robert Lichter, Linda S. Lichter, and Stanley Rothman are the authors of Prime Time: How TV Portrays American Culture, from which this article is excerpted. The selection below deals with their study of the first month of the 1992-1993 prime—time television season, in which the authors monitored every character and socially relevant theme that appeared on the four major broadcast networks.

In addition to simply counting the number of shows or scenes that featured violence, the Lichters and Rothman discuss the types of violence that were shown and the context in which they were presented. They note, for example, that many police dramas were using more intense scenes of violence less often. In addition, in prime time more "good guy" than "bad guy" characters used violence, and...