A screen shot from Channel One News on October 31, 2012. Over four million schoolchildren were compelled to hear this commercial for these extremely expensive headphones ($150!!).
From Jim Metrock: For anyone who doubts that Channel One News has become a hyper-commercialism mess, I offer up for your consideration the interesting situation that occurred on October 31, 2012 (and many other days too).
Going into the first commercial break, Channel One aired their Hear It Now segment that promotes a musical act’s latest album by displaying the album cover while playing a song from the album with a voice over that tells students the name of the song and the name of the musical artist.
Now this commercial content is being sponsored by yet another advertiser. Boomphones.com is a company that sells a headphones that double as a boombox. This is like a Snickers commercial being sponsored by Ford Motors. This layering of advertisers is even more stunning when you realize that the Hear It Now feature is not considered by Channel One as commercial content. The plugging of the musical act and the Boomphones pitch are not considered when calculating Channel One’s two minute-limit, daily limit on advertising.
Boomphones: The product looks OK as a pair of oversized headphones, but the look becomes very odd when a person puts the headphones around their neck and uses them as a boombox.
This person appears in a Boomphones promotional video wearing his Boomphones around his neck. These headphones have four speakers: two inside speakers for the headphone part and two speakers on the outside for the boombox part. This man was obviously paid to wear these large headphones around his neck, but who would walk around their neighborhood wearing this product blasting out music from under their chin? Who would pay $150 to look like a fool?
