Samurai Girl

September 8, 2008

 
 

Above are two frames from a 30-second commercial on Channel One News for Samurai Girl. The program is a six-hour TV miniseries. Students were forced to watch this ad during the week before the show began on September 5, 2008.

Channel One’s parent company Alloy Media and Marketing created and owns the young-adult novel series Samurai Girl. They have a financial interest in this miniseries.

In the image below you see the show’s main actress Jamie Chung as she appeared the next day on Channel One News. Now she is a "guest presenter." Channel One allows her to plug her show at the beginning of the broadcast and then again when she reads a pop quiz which has a connection to her TV show and then again at the end of the show.

First no school should be wasting class time advertising anything, much less this TV program. Second, Channel One News is violating their own long standing, but often ignored, news standards. Since Ms. Chung was currently appearing in a commercial airing on Channel One News (Sept. 3 and Sept. 5), she could not be a "guest presenter" on the program.

Section 3: Guest Presenters
3.1 Since no identification of an advertiser or its products is permitted to be seen or heard during a broadcast outside the time devoted to billboards or commercial messages, celebrities currently featured in the advertisements of C1N sponsors are ineligible to be guest presenters. The Executive Producer of C1N will decide when sufficient time has passed for the celebrity to be eligible to be a guest presenter. From News Standards – Guest Presenters – Channel One News.

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From Channel One’s transcript September 4, 2008

The first person students see on the Sept. 4 edition of Channel One News is … Jamie Chung!? Who is she? She quickly tells them about her "television event." She talks right to the students. This is powerful advertising. "Channel One News starts right now."

(SOT: Jamie Chung)