Frontline: Does Tv Kill?

If you were to examine the viewing patterns and subsequent criminal records of, say, 1000 subjects over a two or three decade period, you might end up with a good sociological study. When you set up surveillance cameras to monitor three kids watching TV over one summer, however, what you've got is a parody. Or, better yet, television; since only on TV will this kind of scholarly shorthand be mistaken for serious investigation. The Frontline crew descends on...where else? Hudson, NY, birthplace of TV where the surveillance cameras begin rolling in the homes of three children selected at "random": all boys, one Latino, one black, one white. Popcorn in hand, we await the "surprising answers" that the narrator has promised us--in excellent Hard Copy teaser fashion--will be revealed. But what we see are kids who either watch little or too much TV (ditto for their parents). Not surprisingly, the kids who do watch excessive amounts of TV don't go on a murderous rampage during the course of the filming; we do see the kids playing with toy guns and water bazookas, but that proves diddly (we don't see the kids eating, sleeping, or talking to relatives much, although they presumably spent as much or more time on these activities). The program briefly comes alive in an interview with Barry Sanders (whose new book "A" Is For Ox is, by turns, exceptionally thought-provoking in its analysis of literacy and irritating with its arguments based on semantic games), but with only a couple of minutes, he can't even begin to present his ideas in more than outline form. The program ends with a short panel discussion moderated by Bill Moyers, in which a pair of hand-wringing conservatives say the obvious, and cyberbrat Douglas Rushkoff says that the program answers nothing. Not only Does TV Kill? fail to answer anything, it can't even effectively raise the question. Not recommended. (R. Pitman)