Kathy Goodman the longest serving employee at Channel One News has been quietly removed from the company. She has been gone for exactly one year. The public was unaware of her departure because like Channel One’s ouster of Dr. Paul Folkemer , there was no press release, no public statement of thanks for her 18+ years of work to the company, no best wishes.
I met Ms. Goodman one time at a national education conference. I found her to be a rather rude person, but I give her some slack because she unlike Dr. Folkemer and other Channel One employees I have known, was a True Believer. She loved Channel One News. Other employees liked the salary or liked the camera time they received, but Goodman liked the concept of “place based advertising” as Christopher Whittle espoused it. I was at the conference calling for commercial-free, Channel One-free classrooms. She was there trying to convince educators that classroom commercials were OK. Of course, she was rude. I was undermining here employer and her way of life.
Ms. Goodman got her start at Whittle Communications (the founder of Channel One) before the 1994 sale of Channel One to K-III Communications (later to become Primedia, Inc.). She actually worked in the Knoxville palace where Channel One got its start.
Knoxville. TN – The good days for Kathy Goodman and Channel One News. This gaudy business headquarters in Knoxville didn’t last long.
Her life was tied to the success of Channel One. Unfortunately for her and Channel One News, Obligation found out about the company in 1996. Obligation has worked tirelessly to remove Channel One from public school classrooms since. From 1998 on, the company has steadily decreased in size. Ms. Goodman’s employer lost so many schools that in 2007 Channel One News was all but bankrupt. Alloy Media and Marketing came along and rescued the company and Ms. Goodman’s job, but parents and educators continued to demand the end of Channel One’s forced commercials. By 2008, Ms. Goodman’s fate and the fate of Channel One News was sealed.
In the end the company couldn’t keep paying Ms. Goodman just as it couldn’t keep paying Dr. Folkemer.
Stick a fork in them all.
They’re done.
