June 8, 2011 – From Jim Metrock:
Ten years ago Obligation discovered Channel One News was offering public school teachers money for helping in signing up neighboring schools. The company wanted teachers to work for Channel One while still working for the school district. The money would paid straight to teachers and superintendents and school boards didn’t need to know about the payment.
Channel One put teachers at risk of losing their jobs with this scheme. Teachers are government employees. They are to be paid by their school district. To accept money from a school vendor would indicate they are also working for the vendor. Every state we talked to thought Channel One’s plan was on its face wrong and potentially unethical.
Channel One News was stopped in its tracks. The plan died the day this Wall Street Journal article was published. Today Channel One is a ghost of its former self. There are very few people working for the company anymore and they had few full-paying advertisers this past school year. In short the company is as desperate today as they were in August 2001.
When Channel One tried to pay teachers to do work for them in 2001, the company had 12,000+ schools signed to contracts. Today in June 2011 they have around 8,000. They should probably try to pay teachers again because they continue to lose schools, but they don’t have the money. It’s been a hard decade for the teen marketing experts from New York City. [New York state, home to Channel One News, has always outlawed their in-school TV show from all New York public schools.]
