Objectives-To outline the design and present selected findings from the evaluation of a state counter-advertising, anti-tobacco media campaign. The appropriateness of the design for states developing media evaluations is discussed. Design-Four cross sectional, telephone surveys of the 12-17 year old population were used to track and monitor advertising and campaign awareness, confirmed awareness, and receptivity. The Florida baseline and one year surveys were used with two parallel national surveys in a quasi-experimental design to assess attitude and smoking related behaviour change attributable to the campaign. Measures-Awareness was measured by self report, confirmed awareness by unaided description, and receptivity by self reports of how well advertisements were liked, talked to friends about, and made one think about whether or not to smoke. Eleven attitude and three smoking behaviour items for Florida (treatment) and a national (control) population were compared at baseline and after 12 months. Results-Significant increases in ad specific awareness, confirmed, receptivity, and campaign awareness, and confirmed awareness were reached by the sixth week. They continued to rise through the first year. No attitude and only minor behaviour diVerences were noted between the treatment and comparison populations at baseline. By the end of the first year, Florida youth had stronger antitobacco attitudes and better behaviour patterns than the comparison population. Conclusions-The industry manipulation strategy used in the Florida campaign resulted in high rates of recall, significant changes in attitudes/beliefs, and reduced rates of smoking behaviour among youth. (Tobacco Control 2001;10:9-15)

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Pre-Christmas Saturday morning message strategies and presentational techniques on national network television programs.Each Saturday morning children might be exposed to as many as fifty toy and food commercials that are carefully designed to teach and persuade them. In addition, the messages present extensive incidental information concerning social attitudes and behavior.A recent set of articles in thisJournal (2,3,4) and the present symposium explore several aspects of this process. However, there have been only two major analyses of the content of children's television advertising. Barcus (1) monitored four Saturday mornings, analyzing 31 1 commercials from three networks and one independent station. He found that the most frequently presented product categories were for cereals (23 percent), toys (23 percent), other foods and snacks (23) percent), and candies and sweets (21 percent). Winick, Williamson, Chuzmir, and Winick (5) examined 236 selected commercials submitted by children's advertisers. Their study dealt primarily with food ads: snacks and desserts (22 percent), cereals (20 percent), candy (16 percent), drinks (16 percent), and other food and restaurants (15 percent). Animation was used in almost half of the ads, slogans were employed in three-fifths of the commercials, premium offers were featured in one-tenth of the commercials, and the product was associated with fun in two-fifths of the cases. Many food ads referred to sweetness but fewer discussed nutrition, and ads almost never suggested that the child ask the parent to buy the product.