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Violent '70s TV helped mold young viewers into violent adults, a study says. Intrigued, we set up a toughman competition of sorts to see how much TV violence has changed - if at all.
By ERIC DEGGANS, Times TV Critic
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 17, 2003
Did Steve Austin and Wile E. Coyote help turn kids into criminals?
That's the seeming conclusion of a 15-year study released last week that found that kids who watched violent TV shows in the '70s were more likely than other kids to be violent as adults and commit crimes such as traffic violations.
The University of Michigan study, which tracked 329 children who were 6 to 8 years old in 1977, classified Starsky and Hutch, The Six Million Dollar Man and Roadrunner cartoons as some of the violent shows of that time.
We couldn't help wondering: If the Bionic Man was considered violent TV then, how do today's shows compare? What follows is a quick analysis of a middle-of-the-road '70s cop show, Baretta, and a middle-of-the-road modern-day cop show, CSI: Miami.
Our thumbnail analysis: Individual scenes of violence may be more explicit now, but the collateral damage -- car chases, fist fights, car crashes -- was higher way back when.
Check out how much -- and how little -- has changed in nearly 30 years.
BARETTA: In the 1975 episode "The Half Million Dollar Baby," a beautiful, neurotic photographer dating Robert Blake's Tony Baretta takes $500,000 from a crime scene and lets Baretta take the blame.
CSI: MIAMI: Last Monday's episode, "Dispo Day," featured David Caruso's Horatio Caine and one of his crime scene investigators ambushed by armed robbers while heading to incinerate a truckload of drugs (a no-good tabloid TV news reporter was the mastermind).
BARETTA: Four dead, all criminals.
CSI: Five dead, three criminals and two cops.
BARETTA: Two people, including Tony's girlfriend.
CSI: Two people, including a woman posing as a suburban mom.
BARETTA: Two.
CSI: None.
BARETTA: Two.
CSI: One.
BARETTA: Three.
CSI: One.
BARETTA: Two.
CSI: None.
BARETTA: Three.
CSI: One.
BARETTA: One.
CSI: One.
BARETTA: None.
CSI: Two.