CHANNEL SURFING: BATTLE OF SEXES CONTINUES IN FRONT OF TV; MEN TEND TO ZAP

"Guys don't care about what's on TV. They care about what else is on."

That comment from comedian Jerry Seinfeld is right on target, says Jim Dufek, an assistant professor of television in the mass communications department at Southeast Missouri State University.

Dufek says channel surfing is primarily "a male thing."

"Women are more apt to sit and become involved in a program ... where men are harder to entertain. It's harder to keep their attention," he said.

"ABC's `20/20' did a story on this last year and went into the homes of three or four couples, and in every one of them the men controlled the remote control. There was a lot of anxiety between the man and the woman when the man would change the channel," recalled Dufek.

Dufek admits to being a channel surfer.

"My wife hates to watch TV with me," he observed.

"Once I get to the next program, I forget what I was watching in the first place," he said.

"A lot of times I don't even turn (the TV) on because once I turn it on it (the surfing) starts," he confided.

Dufek says he doesn't watch television for hours on end, but sees the channel scanning as an extension of his job.

"During a commercial, I usually do a full sweep to see what else is on," he said.

Television, he says, is addictive. Recognizing that fact, Dufek and his wife limit how much television their children can watch.

Channel surfing reflects the viewing habits of the MTV generation, which grew up on the quick hits of music videos, says Dufek. "You are seeing more of the MTV generation growing up now that wants much more in a shorter amount of time."

Dufek says he discusses channel surfing with his students. "Every student does it, but the most dominant are males 22 or 23 years old," he said.

"They were the upstarts of MTV. That's what they want. They want the immediate gratification," said Dufek.

All that surfing and zapping is of concern to people like Jim Riley of Red Letter Communications, an advertising agency in Cape Girardeau that handles a lot of television commercials.

"The price is determined for television advertising by the amount of an estimated audience that is delivered by a program," he explained.

"People are not paying to run ads on television so you can watch the television show," he said. "We are paying to advertise there because we are trying to reach the people with our sales message.

"Unfortunately, a lot of zapping takes place during the commercials," he noted.

To hold the viewer's attention, clients often pay a premium price to have advertising aired first during a commercial break.

Commercials have to attract attention. "You've got to create something to interest them," he said.

"Another thing to do is create roadblocks and advertise on several different stations almost precisely at the same time," said Riley.

So if someone's surfing through the channels, he or she will be more likely to catch at least a glimpse of that commercial.

"Part of my job as an advertising agent is to produce a commercial so if somebody sees two seconds of it it has an impression on them," he said.

Riley believes channel surfing is more of a young person's activity. "It's mainly with the kids."

Riley says surfing is a sign of a viewer's boredom, and reflects the short-attention-span, MTV-style of TV viewing.

"I'm not a surfer," he said. "You reach a certain age and you start to say this is not comfortable."