From Jim Metrock:
When I first found out about Channel One’s commercial exploitation of schoolchildren in 1996, I learned about various protests against the company. I remember watching a video of students in Fargo, ND protesting against their school administrators requiring them to watch Channel One News and its commercials. I remember watching a local TV station report showing the principal of a Fargo school threatening students with disciplinary action if they didn’t immediately report to their classroom to watch Channel One News.
Here were students wanting to be free of the requirement of having to endure Channel One’s commercial TV show whose purpose was to encourage them to buy various products and junk food, and the administrators demanding they give up potential academic time to satisfy the commercial and financial needs of Channel One. Where were the teachers? They should have been siding with the students, but they evidently didn’t think this was a battle worth fighting. There is no mention in news reports of teachers back in 1992 making any effort to stand up for commercial-free classrooms.
In 1996, Consumer Union, a long time opponent of Channel One published an important report about Channel One and other similar companies. The report was called Captive Kids and it mentioned Fargo schools.
Students themselves have protested required viewing of Channel One. “We don’t feel corrupted by watching commercials,” said one student involved in a Fargo, North Dakota, sit-down, “But we think we should have the choice of watching or turning them off.” The students won a partial victory. Fargo’s North High School now shows Channel One before the start of the school day, and students who don’t want to watch it don’t have to.
Isn’t that pathetic. Students could only obtain a “partial victory.” The Fargo school administration was siding with this kiddie marketing company in a battle with some of their own students.
Surely over the years Fargo has hired more enlightened administrators and elected or appointed much smarter school board members. Surely Fargo students don’t watch Channel One’s commercials during their school day in 2011!?
You know the answer already. Movie and video game commercials along with many other commercials are still a standard part of the day in many Fargo classrooms.
Here are some of the rules at Fargo’s Discovery Middle School. Notice #7. Advertisers love schools like this. Here are government employees – teachers – making sure students are quiet so the commercials will not be drowned out by talking… or heaven forbid…. teaching. It appears the long ago “partial victory” of moving Channel One News to a before-school-starts time period was reversed by the Fargo school administration.
Below: In 1992, Fargo’s school district disgraced itself by fighting its own students over Channel One’s commercial assault.
