“Program is now starting now. TV sets turning on.”
From Jim Metrock:
Teachers don’t like Channel One News.
Not all teachers of course. There are some that like the hour-a-week break Channel One provides from dealing with students. Some teachers like this electronic babysitter. “Be quiet and watch your TV,” you can hear a lazy teacher tell students.
But lazy teachers are a small minority thank goodness. Teachers who are teaching for all the right reasons don’t like Channel One News because it takes away control of their classroom. Channel One robs schools of local control with its onerous contract. The school MUST show our program 90%!!! of school days in its ENTIRETY!!! or we will take away our TV sets!
Teachers really don’t like the lost of 32+ hours of school time each year to this hyper-commercial youth marketing (and some news) TV show.
When Channel One News was in its infancy (1989-1990), the company left it up to teachers to turn on Channel One News so the students would be able to see the program and most importantly the commercials. But… teachers didn’t turn on the show. Their school might have agreed to Channel One’s contract, but teachers didn’t want to lose their class time to Channel One and its McDonalds, Snickers, and Pepsi commercials. Channel One had to come up with an answer to get around teachers who didn’t appreciate classroom marketing.
The answer was simple: Take the teachers out of the equation. Make the teacher irrelevant. Have the TVs come on automatically.
Channel One had Magnavox reconfigured their classroom TV sets to come on each morning without any action by the classroom teacher. This was just one way that Channel One News showed its disregard for classroom teachers. This youth marketing company, then owned by Whittle Communications, could not tolerate non-compliant teachers.
The screenshot above is what Channel One’s key operator in each school sees before the show starts. Librarians and media specialists are usually in charge of making sure classrooms see the Channel One News show each day. You can see the words: TV sets turning on.
A teacher may be nowhere near the TV set in her classroom, maybe she is helping a student at her desk when BAM! the TV set starts blaring Channel One News. Usually the first thing students hear is a rock or rap band that is being promoted on Channel One News for that week.
No surprise that both major teacher unions have gone on record protesting Channel One’s presence in American classrooms. No surprise that Social Studies teachers and English teachers oppose Channel One News. And of course no surprise that after twenty years of trying, Channel One News has never received an endorsement from ANY teachers organization or any other educational organization.
