Humor in children's educational television

The use of entertainment features in children's educational television was examined through a systematic content analysis of sample programs from popular series. In addition to assessments of the quantity of use of humorous and attention‐getting material, several subsequent analyses examined distinguishing characteristics of the entertainmentoriented messages. It was determined that a substantial proportion of the programs examined contained humorous incidents and attention‐getting devices. In addition, several patterns of use for these entertainment features were discovered.