In One Day in One City, 1,846 Acts of TV Violence--That’s Entertainment? Broadcasting: : With kids’ fare--cartoons and MTV--leading the glut, let’s call this a health hazard akin to smoking.

Imagine the following label affixed to your television set: Warning--Watching Television May Be Hazardous to Your Children’s Health.

If that sounds radical, consider the studies that convincingly demonstrate a correlation between the frequent viewing of violence and aggressive behavior in youngsters.

A new study commissioned by TV Guide shows that there’s more violence entering our homes than ever before. It’s coming from many more sources--home video, pay-per-view and cable, as well as from broadcast networks and local stations. The primary offenders are music videos, reality shows, cartoons and promos for violent theatrical movies.

In a single, random day (April 2) of television programming tracked in Washington for TV Guide, 1,846 individual acts of violence were observed. (We defined violence as “any deliberate act involving physical force or the use of a weapon in an attempt to achieve a goal, further a cause, stop the action of another, act out an angry impulse, defend oneself from attack, secure a material reward, or intimidate others.”)

-- Of the programming monitored, cartoons were the most violent category, with 471 violent scenes in just one day.

-- 21% of all the violence--389 scenes-- involved a life-threatening assault; 362 scenes involved gunplay.

-- Cable networks averaged three times as much violence as the “Big Three” commercial networks. Specifically, music videos proved to be a greater source of televised violence than previously imagined. MTV showed as much violence as the three commercial networks combined.

It has been estimated that by the time a child graduates from elementary school, he or she will have witnessed at least 8,000 murders and more than 100,000 acts of violence on television. In her book, “Deadly Consequences,” Dr. Deborah Prothrow-Stith, assistant dean of government and community programs at the Harvard School of Public Health, points out that inner-city children may be more vulnerable to the effects of violence on television. These kids not only watch more TV because they spend more time indoors-- the streets are dangerous and there are few other recreational choices; they also have fewer male role models countering the TV super-hero who’s solving problems with violence.

So what can we do, short of censorship but beyond hand-wringing?

Why not treat TV violence as a public health issue, as we do already with cigarette smoking and drunken driving? Think how much those campaigns have changed people’s attitudes and behavior and, most important, saved lives. To take the same approach with TV programming would involve an intensive public education campaign and strenuous encouragement of the television industry to be sensitive to the problem and deglamorize physical force and the people who resort to it.

As Peggy Charren, president of Action for Children’s Television, said to us, “You have to help parents understand that that box in the living room is not always a friend of the family.”

It’s up to parents to make the effort to watch what their children are watching so that they can screen out overly violent programs and discuss what the make-believe acts of violence would mean in real life. Kids often don’t seem to understand the true repercussions of a violent act; on TV, there frequently are no repercussions.

This fall, a number of popular shows will have the Los Angeles riots in their plot lines. If the new season reflects TV at its best, episodes on the riots will illuminate the conditions that led to the violence, not trivialize them and sensationalize the effect in images that may again become reality.

Many programmers and producers do really care about the results of the shows they air. But they live by the “overnights”--the Nielsen ratings, which define a success or a failure in television terms--and under that kind of pressure, the slope from relevance to sensationalism is a slippery one. But if, through education and the proper treatment by the industry, TV violence becomes viewed as distasteful and inappropriate, hopefully any meaningless violent act will end up with the same inglorious appeal as a drunk killing people on the highway.