Abstract
Many uses and gratification studies in the mass communication research revealed that people select TV programs to meet their own needs, regardless of the senders' intention. Most of the studies, however, neglect the impact of others, which was found important in the studies of campaign effect. This study intends to examine the impact of others in terms of interpersonal environment (Ikeda, 1994, 1997) and to reconsider Komori and Ikeda (1996)'s findings. The hypothesis was: the more the number of the frequently-contact-others who watch a certain genre of TV program, the higher the tendency that the main respondent would watch the same genre of TV programs. Conducting a snowball sampling survey at one ward in Tokyo, and analyzing the data, the hypothesis was confirmed with at least three genres, dramas, sports, and "wideshow"s, which are mainly composed of gossips about stars. This implies people's selection of TV programs can be explained in terms of interpersonal factors.
