What School Students Watch on TV - A Case Study in Sompeta, Srikakulam District, Andhra Pradesh

The paper reports the findings of an exploratory study of students studying in three different medium of study, the English medium, the telugu medium and the Odiya medium in two linguistic communities of Sompeta, situated in the southern part of India, and northern part of Andhra, bordering the state of Odisha. The students chosen for the study were Telugu, rooted traditionally in the soils of the state of Andhra Pradesh, and Odiya, belonging to the neighboring state of Odisha, which became minority language group in the three districts of Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and Srikakulam. The study examines choice of the types of programmes in multilingual television viewing on value analysis of students across these two linguistic communities. Television viewing is a major activity and influence on children and adolescents. Children in India watch an average of three to four hours of television a day. The influence of the medium of study in the school is also an underlying factor for students in choosing the programmes to watch and to ignore. In this study a focus is on who watches what programmes on TV.