Channel One has made another mistake. Channel One’s in-school TV show for schoolchildren daily advertises their official web site (www.channelone.com). On this site, children are bombarded with even more advertisements. Commercial advertisements are not suppose to be on a children’s educational site, but Channel One’s site, like its TV show, is mainly an advertisement delivery system – it has little to nothing to do with education.
One Channel One advertiser on their web site is a company called Videoshoppers. Their web site address is www.videoshoppers.com. A child can click on the Videoshoppers’ “banner” and be transferred to this video retailer’s home page. One more click and a child can browse through hundreds of titles of adult video’s often accompanied with pictures of scantily clad women or nude women.
Video titles at this Channel One advertiser’s site include: Lingerie Dreams, Miss Nude World, Mondo Topless, and Nude Model Search.
A child can order these adult videos simply by providing a credit card number and a shipping address.
Obligation sent an email message to Videoshoppers.com asking for the safeguards they have in place to keep a child from purchasing adult videos with a parent’s credit card number. Videoshoppers has made no reply. Obligation has sent an email message to Channel One on May 2, asking to take corrective measures and to apologize to all school systems for this advertisement. Channel One has never apologized for any of its “mistakes”, but if they do we will publish on this page.
“Channel One is so incredibly reckless when it comes to children, ” says Jim Metrock, Obligation president. “To Channel One, children are apparently just consumer units to be resold to the highest bidder. When you see Channel One’s reviews of R-rated movies and explicit-lyric CDs, when you see Channel One’s sex advice to children, when you see a drug story on their TV show telling kids that adults are becoming more tolerant of drug usage, and when you see them fail to check out this Videoshoppers site, it shows that Channel One has no appreciation for the sensitivities of its youthful audience. There should be no ads on the TV show and the web site, but certainly an advertisement like Videoshoppers’ should not be near children.”
Channel One’s web site has a company called Accipter handle its ad management on their web site. Accipiter changes ads around constantly so you may not see a Videoshoppers’ ad at first. Also, if Channel One is true to form, once caught doing something offensive, they correct the situation only to avoid further bad publicity, not to protect children.
