The research literature on the effects of television on the behavior and attitudes of children shows that most television programs and commercials present a highly distorted view of life and society and show discrimination in character roles with regard to sex and race. Above everything, American commercial television is violent and children represent an extremely large viewing population. Research indicates that television viewing strongly affects children in such areas as creativity, role models, cognitive development, and aggressive-violent behavior. Attitudes toward commercials tend to become more negative as children become older, but tolerance increases with the amount of television watched. The purchasing patterns of families with younger children appear to be affected by commercials. Much publicly-supported children's television programming is cognitively focused, but, despite its apparent success, public commitment to children's television shows little improvement. Child-created television, in which children produce their own programming, provides an alternative model to present practices and allows children's television to program "real" problem situations while controlling for anti-social behavior models. (CWM)