Over the last year, there has been a noticeable change in the advertisers on Channel One News. The news is encouraging to the parents, students and teachers who are trying to rid their schools of this show.
Gone is Mars, Inc. the candy bar company. This was a huge advertiser on Channel One for many years. This revenue stream was evidently yanked last summer. Reebok is nowhere to be seen. This was Channel One’s biggest advertiser from what we could tell.
Who replaced these companies? Wacky sounding dot.com companies like ByeByeNow.com. This company is a travel agency on the web. It has nothing to do with children or even older teens. It is ridiculous for this company to be on Channel One until you know the "rest of the story." PRIMEDIA, Channel One’s long suffering parent company, owns a part of ByeByeNow.com. They want to advertise it any way they can. Maybe some child will tell his parents about this travel agency and they will sell a cruise. The point is when Channel One runs an ad for a "sister" company this isn’t maximizing revenue, especially when the demographics of Channel One’s captive audience is unreceptive to the advertiser’s product.
Children are also be forced to watch "contentville.com" commercials. Again, this dot.com that allows for articles and other content to be downloaded for a fee has very little to offer students. Why are their ads blanketing Channel One? PRIMEDIA owns a piece of this company and they might as well run ads for it on Channel One since their would be dead air space if it didn’t.
Then there was "DigitalBackPack.com" and "Swell.com." These two don’t seem to be owned by PRIMEDIA but again show that the mainstay advertisers apparently are staying away from Channel One as the controversy heats up. Swell.com is a surfing site and was advertised on Channel One during the freezing cold of November and December. This is another indication that the pipeline of advertisers is not overflowing.
