From Jim Metrock:
“No news is good news.” That might be the new motto at Channel One News.
Today there was no news on Channel One News.
Today Channel One News reran a feature story on the Holocaust that was shown to students in 2000. Channel One has increasingly been using old footage to fill up many of their reports. Today they filled up an entire program.
Obviously, it is less expensive to use canned video from years before than to send reporters out to news stories and film new material. Channel One’s financial situation may be forcing them to take such actions. (Last year, the Wall Street Journal reported that Channel One was using an entertainment merger/acquisition firm, Allen and Company, to find new investors or a purchaser.)
Channel One likes to say they are the ONLY source of news for many young people. One has to feel sorry for those young people. Already Channel One NEWS refuses to stream news updates after school, on the weekends, and all summer long. Every holiday, Channel One employees turn off the lights in their newsroom and disappear. (Many school districts have a regular school day on Good Friday. Channel One News was “dark” on that day. Their employees enjoyed a long weekend, even though they consider themselves a “news organization.”
It would be overstating it to call Channel One News a “part-time news show.” They are much less than that.
Channel One’s producer is Jim Morris. He made the decision that no news from the previous day, April 29, would be reported to students on the 30th. I imagine he considered the money the company could save and the fact that, hey, the kids probably already know what happened the day before.
Channel One could easily have replayed the Holocaust story on its Classroom Connection channel, but they didn’t.
Of course, Channel One would defend itself by saying kids could go to their web site and read all the news of the day. For those of you who haven’t visited “The Best News Site” for young people, you will have a big laugh when you visit channelone.com. The little news you will find are cut and paste AP stories and it will be difficult to find these few stories. Channel One is about entertainment and their web site documents that fact.
So there was no news today, Wednesday, April 30, just like there is no news on Saturdays and Sundays. Pretty soon the hard-nosed reporters at Channel One can take a really long vacation. They need it.
For the script of the April 30 show click on channeloneteacher.com
