And, bless his heart, he just has a knack for making incredibly poor decisions.
One of the rare pictures on the Internet of the camera shy Kent Haehl.
Kent Haehl, CEO of Channel One News
Mr. Haehl, an ad salesman, was hired as Channel One’s CEO in August 2007. At the time, Channel One claimed they had “over 7 million” students under contract. After five years of Haehl’s leadership Channel One News says they have “nearly 5 million” students. Rounding down to 7,000,000 students in 2007 and rounding up to 5,000,000 in 2012, that is a loss of 2 million students or a 28% loss in their captive audience.
That means during Kent Haehl’s period of leadership his company has been losing on average more than a 1,000 students per day. (365 days X 5 years = 1,825 days. 2,000,000/1825 days = 1,095 students leaving Channel One’s viewership daily.)
His decision to make Channel One News a hyper-commercial TV show with considerably more advertising time than the maximum limits in their contracts with schools has alienated many public schools. His decisions to allow ads for age-inappropriate movies and TV shows has certainly angered teachers, students, and the public.
Two examples from this past month: Haehl’s decision to advertise the violent horror movies The Possession and The House at the End of the Street in classrooms.
Then just this week Haehl allows a very inappropriate video game to be advertised on Channelone.com. A smoking hand gun, Kent?! “Crime Pays”?! Really?
No surprise this is one CEO who is presiding over an ever shrinking company.
