Though the TV networks have made a few concessions to the many Americans worried about the flood of violence on the tube, this campaign is far from over.

That much should be clear from this week's report out of Washington about the fresh effort being mounted to get the networks to go beyond such lukewarm palliatives as posting parental warnings before particularly gruesome programs and sponsoring a study designed to measure the violence on TV.What's needed now are tougher reforms such as requiring broadcasters to rate programs for violence, letting violent programs be aired only when children are not normally in the audience, and requiring TV sets to come equipped with technology that will let parents block violent programs.

As Congress considers such changes, the lawmakers would do well to pay close attention to a recent New York Times report on the impact of TV violence. Here are just a few of its more pertinent and persuasive findings:

- Over the past two decades, the three major TV networks have averaged five acts of violence an hour in their prime-time programming.

- On Saturday morning, when children do most of their viewing, the networks averaged about 25 acts of violence an hour for the past 15 years. In the early 1970s, the rate was about half that.

- Before graduating from elementary school, the average child will watch 100,000 acts of simulated violence. Poor children see even more.

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- Researchers widely agree there is a statistically significant connection between watching violence and participating in it.

- One study found that the best predictor of aggression among boys had nothing to do with how their parents treated them. Rather, it was the amount of TV violence they had watched a decade earlier. A decade later - when the children studied had become adults - the same correlation still held.

Despite these and many similar findings, some people profess to see no connection between violence on the tube and violence in the streets. Yet it's well-known that children are highly impressionable and learn from what they see. Moreover, it stands to reason that since TV commercials can sell products, then TV programs can do other kinds of sales jobs.

Clearly, TV viewers need to make their concerns known to TV stations and sponsors as well as to Congress. Meanwhile, until the broadcasters police themselves or the lawmakers do the job for them, the best defense against televised violence is still the one provided by alert parents who care enough to control the TV set.

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