Wednesday,
January 5, 2005
Subject: Response to “Thieves of Time”
Dear Jim,
This is my response to “Thieves of time”. I think that Obligation should find some schools and school districts that have Channel One, and file a class action lawsuit against them for stealing class time, and violating their contract with the school. Channel One obviously went over the 12 minute show limit, and the 2 minutes of ads limit.
I bet budget hungry schools could sue for quite a bit of money. For example:
Consider a high school of 1800 students. If the tuition per student at a high school is $5000 per year, and the school year was 180 days, and each school day was 360 minutes long. This means that a minute of school time costs 7.71 cents per student.
Say channel one is shown in 80% of all classrooms, and on 90% of all school days in this school. So one minute over each day for contract violations, and channel one owes this school ((1800*.8)*(180*.9)*0.0771)=$17,985.89!
For a high school of 3000 students of the same length school day and year, Channel One would owe the school for going a minute over each day (3000*.8)*(180*.9)*(0.0771)=$29,976.48!
At a private school of 1200 high school students, where tuition is $18,000 per year, with the same length of school day and time, Channel One would owe the school for going a minute over each day for contract violations, (18000/180/360)=27.7 cents per minute (1200*.8)*(180*.9)*(0.277)=$43187.904
If Channel One did this for multiple years, multiply the costs to the school. This show is the most expensive of any. if the schools were smart, they should buy their TV networks, and for programming get Cable in the Classroom (which is free), or order from educational video libraries. PBS, Discovery Channel, Scholastic, as well as many educational curriculum companies offer excellent documentaries and educational videos available for low cost to school.
Stephen
Stephen has a good idea. Obligation hopes that readers will encourage their school boards to talk to their board attorneys about the possibility of getting some of their money back from Channel One. Obligation has all the evidence an attorney needs in our storage room.
