It’s Showtime: More Sex and Violence : Are parents worried more about what happens on television or in real life?

Concern over the nose-diving taste and educational value of prime-time television extends far beyond prudes and religious fundamentalists--and it has intensified with the debut of this fall’s tawdry lineup.

Indisputably, many network shows aimed at young viewers are down-right raunchy. The voluntary restraint on adult programming from 8 to 9 p.m. that broadcasters demonstrated during the 1970s and early ‘80s has disintegrated amid a no-holds-barred fight for audiences.

Sex and violence sell as never before. So as the halter tops on female characters grow ever skimpier or come off altogether, as references to jailhouse sodomy, masturbation, teen-age sex and illicit drug use beam into living rooms, ratings have soared. Ironically, this nadir in taste is one of Americans’ own making: We inflate the ratings and encourage more of the same programming by watching.

Conscientious parents are exasperated by finding themselves forced to fight a guerrilla war to shield their children from what they see as harmful elements of popular culture--in video games and rock and rap music as well as television. Of course it can be argued that the difference between today’s TV and that of the parents’ youth is mainly one of degree. After all, baby-boomer parents, often the most critical of the small screen’s preoccupation with sex and violence, are members of the first generation reared in front of the tube. Did pre-pubescent boys in the 1960s watch “I Dream of Jeannie” because of their interest in the space program--or in the hope of catching a glimpse of Jeannie’s barely concealed navel? And what about those wild shootouts, dead bodies everywhere, in “The Untouchables”?

Even so, much has changed in American life since then, making today’s TV sex jokes and shootouts far less the stuff of fantasy. Teen-agers can walk from the television set onto their front porches and be shot to death; they get pregnant in ever-increasing numbers; they become drug addicts.

So is television imitating life or is it the reverse? Indeed there is evidence that watching repeated acts of violence, for example, can desensitize viewers to real violence.

Because kids--and sometimes their parents--are drawn to slick sitcoms and action shows, appeals to the responsibility of broadcasters have fallen on deaf ears. Parents unhappy with this situation should exercise the ultimate power: Turn off the set. But remember that the most important messages that kids get are from their family surroundings, not TV. A lot of fans of Wile E. Coyote (very violent, he) turned out to be OK--or so we tell ourselves.