Reality sinks in at Channel One News.
From Jim Metrock in Bryant Park in New York City:
Beautiful day in Bryant Park (right behind the New York Public Library). It is a beautiful little park that has a special feature I really like – free, high-speed, wireless Internet service. I have been in the Big Apple since Sunday and this is where I go once a day to check email and the Web on my Apple PowerBook.
The battle against the commercial exploitation of schoolchildren is switching gears as far as Obligation goes. We’re moving from the school board to the board of directors. We moving from Main Street to Madison Avenue and Wall Street.
After nine years of getting the truth out about Channel One News, I am very pleased with what Obligation has done. Channel One News is a shadow of what it was and what it intended to be. All you need to do is read PRIMEDIA’s financial statements to see how far Channel One News has sunk.
Many, many schools have removed the program from their schools or they have just turned off the TVs or they show the program on an infrequent basis. Channel One News knows there is rampant non-compliance with their contract. They just can’t do much about it.
That brings me to Madison Avenue and Wall Street.
Companies advertise on TV to increase sales and brand recognition. Ad agencies have in the past bought space on Channel One News because of the incredible audience numbers Channel One has bragged about for as long as I have been following the company(1996).
Ad agencies have a responsibility to their clients. If the agency is spending their client’s money on a TV show, they have to make sure the client isn’t getting over-billed. The agency just can’t take the TV show’s statement that we have a certain rating or share of the viewers.
Channel One has boasted about having a captive audience of over 8 million viewers. Most certainly, no advertiser has ever paid for 8 million viewers. What they paid for was probably half of that, knowing that some schools are not showing the program as they promised.
Obligation has been telling the world for years that there is no school district in Alabama that, we know of, that honors the Channel One contract. (Keep in mind that Alabama is a very important state for Channel One. We are a poor state and states that spend less on students have a disproportional number of schools with C1 contracts.)
Obligation firmly believes that the real audience numbers for Channel One News are dramatically less than what they are telling advertisers. As Obligation begins having a dialogue with ad agencies and their clients. we expect to see fewer advertisers on Channel One News and those that remain will be paying less for their ads. That will further reduce the revenue going into the pockets of the fat cats at Channel One.
I have been handing out the letters from an Alabama middle school principal and from Channel One president Jim Ritts. These two letters show that Channel One News is not only aware of schools not honoring their contract, but also that the company approves of non-compliance.
