Nebraska Catholic HS Removes Channel One News

Channel One Causes Slight Static at Marian

 By Sara Magnuson

As students returned to school for the beginning of second semester, homeroom procedure seemed a little different. The Channel One news program aimed at teenagers was to be played every homeroom morning for the first 10 minutes before prayer and announcements.

In the past, Channel One had been broadcast over the school’s televisions before homeroom period began and some students and teachers watched. The system was designed so that office personnel would simply turn on the system and classroom televisions would turn on automatically and broadcast the news. It wasn’t always this easy and it seemed that the office and certain teachers were spending more time trouble shooting than what it was worth.

It was the office secretary’s responsibility to turn on Channel One every morning but it became inconvenient when the offices moved to the main foyer after this summer’s construction.  “Overall, I thought Channel One was a good opportunity,” said secretary Mrs. Julie Watsabaugh. 

 Marian became a Channel One school in 1991, and the school was given a television for each of the homeroom classrooms at that time, with the understanding that the program would be aired on each of them.   The first year, Ms. Elizabeth Kish, Head of School, viewed each program to make sure the material was appropriate.

“Channel One presented the news in a pop-style way and I thought it was good and very up to date. But, some of the news items weren’t done well enough for our sophisticated student body,” said Miss Kish.

Others also had mixed feelings about Channel One.

“I showed Channel One news every other morning. I enjoyed it, but the students rarely paid attention to it,” said senior homeroom teacher, Mr. Michael Sporcic.

Many students were not informed of why the news program was being shown or the benefits that Channel One can offer to the school. Some homerooms were never shown the program even once. In 2002,  Channel One news cut into the first few minutes of the first class so the viewing of the program became an issue.

“Our television is unplugged in our room, so I didn’t know we were supposed to watch the news in homeroom,” said sophomore Bethany Widman.

Many homerooms are not even equipped with the televisions to have the opportunity to watch the program. Because the enrollment has risen since 1991, some freshman homerooms are located in computer labs such as Pipeline and Etherhaven so a television was not available for use during that time. Construction from the new addition also impaired a few homeroom televisions for the first half of this school year.

“I didn’t like watching the news in homeroom because no one paid attention and the news sometimes didn’t seem relevant,” said senior Kate Kelly.

“I did watch some of Channel One before homeroom when I was a freshman and it was interesting,” said junior Gina Caragiulo. “Since then, I haven’t really watched it because I need the extra time in the mornings to finish my homework.  Not all the homeroom teachers were very consistent in showing it anyway.”

“I really won’t miss it,” Caragiulo said. “Many people won’t really even notice it’s gone.”

In a few weeks, the opportunity will be gone.  All of the gray mounted televisions that are installed in the classrooms will be removed by Channel One at the request of Miss Kish.  Channel One contracts require that schools show the news program on at least 90 percent of all school days if not every day, according to the Channel One website. Students are required to be present and the program was shown in homeroom.  This semester a new recording form was issued by Channel One and the school was asked to show the program at a later time.  This caused us to take some of first period. 

“It’s disheartening to me that weren’t using the materials to their full extent, but in order to make Channel One work, I needed to be sure that it was worth classtime. Not everyone agreed it was valuable enough to take classtime,” said Miss Kish.

Channel One has offered teacher in-services in the past that have been very beneficial. Miss Kish would have liked to have seen Channel One incorporated into the curriculum a little more and used as part of the learning process.

For the remainder of the year, classrooms will use the televisions that can be carted to and from each room to view videos. The school will remain wired so Cox Cable will easily be able to eventually help the school to start over in equipping the classrooms with connected televisions.  Marian will then have control over the airing of programs.

“I feel we followed the rules and did not misuse the privilege. Every year we were interviewed as to our use of Channel One and we were approved. It was just hard to have Channel One and be able to do it well,” said Miss Kish.  “I am hoping that the technological accessibility we enjoyed will be replaced as soon as funds are available.”