Another anchor abruptly leaves Channel One News.
Justin Finch is taking his talents to South Beach.
From Jim Metrock:
Most Channel One on-air personalities leave in June after the last show of the school year. The continuing financial struggles at Channel One may be the reason Steven Fabian and now Justin Finch have recently left the youth marketing company.
In Mr. Finch’s print and video goodbye he says working at Channel One News was the best job. Well, duh. Mr. Finch was on a TV show where the audience was compelled by force of contract to watch him and his fellow “reporters” every school day. (Sorry, that should read “90% of all school days.)
The truth was his audience couldn’t turn him off. Literally, they could not click the remote and make Mr. Finch disappear. How can you not love a TV job like that.
One thing going for Mr. Finch is his modesty. He lists some of the things he’s done such as interviewing celebrities and people in the news and traveling, but he has done so much more. He has been the pretty face on one of the ugliest corporations in America. He has helped Channel One commercially exploit the school time of hundreds of thousands of minority students who are disproportionately saddled with Channel One’s onerous contract.
A study by Dr. Michael Morgan of the University of Massachusetts-Amherst in 1994 showed that schools in lower-income communities had a greater prevalence of Channel One. In 1999 a statewide study by the Alabama Department of Education found the same. In my travels across the country, I have found the same.
Mr. Finch helped make sure that advertisers got a big chunk of young people’s school time each week. He was a faithful servant for Channel One. When they wanted him – in his role as a reporter – to thank an actor for pitching a new movie, he would do it and always with a smile.
