This article summarizes the results of the first three annual inventories of New York television programs as well as of the single studies in Los Angeles and New Haven conducted by the author for the National Association of Educational Broadcasters with funds supplied by the Fund for Adult Education, established by the Ford Foundation. It also describes and analyzes the theory of content analysis employed in these studies and suggests certain new directions which might usefully be explored in the effort to determine the nature of the reality presented to the American public by television and other mass media. The author is Research Professor of the Institute of Communications Research and Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois.