Televised violence does not attract larger audiences

Evidence

The myth that the prevalence of televised violence is determined by the base desires of viewers is widely accepted, despite empirical evidence to the contrary. Diener and DeFour (1978) correlated levels of program violence and viewership as measured by the Nielsen index of the number of households tuned in to given programs. The correlation that they found, r = 0.05, revealed no relation whatever between the amount of program violence and how many households watched it. Programs aired at the same time by competing networks can affect the viewership of a given program. In an experimental test of whether counterprogramming might affect the correlation, Diener and DeFour found that a program containing its original violence was no more attractive to viewers than the same program with most of the violence deleted. These findings provide no empirical support for the myth that violence sells. Nor does the annual viewership for the top-ranked series Bandura_1e_ch03. — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement, 931

Categorization

• SEED: This data point is ammunition for an essay about how industries naturalize supply-driven choices as consumer demand — the broadcasters’ ‘viewers want violence’ myth is a textbook example of demand fabrication.
• XREF: Connects to the broader supply-creates-demand logic in media studies and to similar myths in other industries.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Albert Bandura, Moral Disengagement: How People Do Harm…, 931