Alcohol on prime-time television.

Alcohol, Advertising, Media, and Consumption among Children, Teenagers, and Young Adults

“…This finding adds further ammunition to the argument (e.g. Wallack, Breed, & Cruz, 1987;Hansen, 1988;Lyons, Dalton, & Hoy, 2006) that television tends to naturalise alcohol consumption as the unproblematic and positive norm, while treating problem-drinking, alcoholism and negative outcomes associated with alcohol consumption as 'exceptional'.…”

“…This finding should be no surprise given evidence we have already reviewed that showed drinking scenes have characterized popular TV drama serials for many years (Hansen, 1986(Hansen, , 2003Furnham, Ingle, Gunter & McClelland, 1997;Wallack, Breed & Cruz, 1987). Pre-teenage boys have been shown to display more positive opinions about alcohol consumption after watching a program that portrayed characters drinking, though there was no clear evidence that such exposure led to an increased likelihood of drinking onset (Kotch, Coulter, & Lipsitz, 1986).…”

“…These studies have shown that portrayals of alcohol and drinking feature prominently in television entertainment 21 programming and with considerable regularity during peak-time television when young people can be expected to be numerically present in the audience (Breed & Defoe, 1981;Cafiso, Goodstadt, Garlington, & Sheppard, 1982). Studies in the early 1980s in the United States and in the United Kingdom found alcohol depictions in approximately two thirds of prime-time television entertainment programs (Hansen, 1986;Wallack, Breed, & Cruz, 1987), while studies focusing particularly on the most watched drama serials or soaps found 86 percent of these to contain visual or verbal references to alcohol (Furnham, Ingle, Gunter, & McClelland, 1997).…”

“…One key point that has repeatedly been made (e.g., Wallack, Breed & Cruz, 1987;Hansen, 1995;Montonen, 1996;Strasburger, Fuld, Mulligan, Altmann et al, 2010) over the last few decades is the imbalance between the communicative resources deployed in the service of alcohol promotion compared with those aimed at educating about the potential dangers associated with the use and abuse of alcohol, resulting in a symbolic message environment that is significantly skewed towards increasing consumption at the expense of messages urging moderation or abstinence. As Strasburger et al (2010: 791) succinctly put it:…”

A Public Health Approach to the Prevention of Alcohol-Related Health Problems

“…A pervasive form of alcohol promotion occurs through the portrayal of alcohol use on television (19,54,184,186) . Breed & de Foe (19) have documented the increased use of alcohol and alcohol-related acts in television situation comedies and dramas from 1950--1982 in the United States , noting that the portrayal of alcohol use in much television programming is a signifi cant distortion of real life.…”