Channel One AWOL

November 26, 2001

Channel One bills itself as the ONLY source of news for many children.  Funny,
Channel One doesn’t even believe their own words.

This Thanksgiving Day weekend from Wednesday, November 21 to this morning,
November 26, Channel One’s web site took a holiday. Funny, the news didn’t
take a holiday, but then Channel One has little to do with current events.

The past few days is merely the latest failure of Channel One to take
their news show seriously.

This Monday morning, Channel One updated their news section (which is
roughly 3% of their web site) for the first time since midday last Wednesday.
If you clicked on the one sentence descriptions of the four news stories
(or rather "news sentences") they posted, you would be taken
to cnn.com, foxnews.com, usatoday.com and msnbc.com. Channel One is merely
linking its web site to respectable news web sites.

Jim Metrock said, "It is all a poorly done charade.  Channel
One could keep children up-to-date on current events with streaming video
and with articles but that would cost too much money.  Channel One
anchors not only took this four-day weekend off, they take off every weekend
and every evening and they do take off more than two months each summer.
If Channel One was a child’s only source of news, that young person wouldn’t
know much.  Channel One is a part-time operation. They won’t do anything
unless they can make big money off the advertisers. They can’t get advertisers
to pay for their news show to be video-streamed all day on the web, so
Channel One won’t do it. Morgan Wandell, the president of programming for
Channel One, is taking Channel One away from news and moving it more into
entertainment and into partnerships with MTV and other companies who salivate
over Channel One’s captive audience."

Click here and see the front page
of Channel One News’ web site. See how much news there is on the front
page.  The Channel One News web site is almost totally devoid of news.  They
are mainly interested in getting personal information from children for
marketing purposes.