Advising and Ordering: Daytime, Prime Time

The patterns of advice-giving and receiving and order-giving and receiving among television's dramatic characters provide an efficient and economical way in which to study the relationships between knowledge, activity, and sex of characters seen on the home screen. In addition, the study of these patterns allows comparison of the dramatic world of daytime TV - addressed primarily to women - with that of prime time. This article is a summary of some of the findings from a study on the advising and ordering patterns of men and women in soap operas and evening dramas.