摘要：

The article presents information on television and the rest of leisure in the U.S. It is commonly believed that American television is particularly suited for those groups in the population who have few resources for other leisure activities-the poor, the old, the little-educated. Hence the high rates of television viewing in these groups are seen as an indicator of a social problem: with more money, more vitality, more education, the heavy television viewers of today would become the book readers or hobbyists of tomorrow. There is a body of social science knowledge that would counter this common-sense hypothesis. This body of knowledge stems from two overlapping traditions. On the one hand, studies done on the poor, here and abroad, have shown that the poor tend to be more removed from all kinds of leisure activities and organizational activities. The leisure habits of the poor tend to be more familistic and apathetic. On the other hand, communications research has found in previous studies that the heaviest consumption of mass media comes not from the bottom groups but from the middle ones.

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