Channel One’s loveable goofballs Cassie Hudson and “Muscle Man” Keith Kocinski have fun at the expense of students. Here Ms. Hudson is mugging for the camera as Mr. Kocinski is pretending he is napping. They just did a story on “napercise” where taking a nap is considered a new form of exercise.
From Jim Metrock:
To understand the reality of Houghton Mifflin’s controversial Channel One News in 2017, it is important to know…
- Channel One has lost roughly half of the schools they had in the 1990s.
- With a much smaller audience, Channel One’s advertising revenue is significantly lower.
- Because they have less money, Channel One can’t afford to cover as many current events.
- Creating non-news stories is cheaper than covering breaking news stories.
- Feature stories, human interest stories, motivational stories, sponsor-supported stories have a long shelf life and their flexibility allows Channel One to keep costs under control.
Below is a video clip from Channel One’s October 16, 2017 program.
When schools signed up for Channel One News, they thought they were going to get a 12-minute news show aimed at their students. 1o minutes of the show would be about current events and 2 minutes would be commercials. Schools thought Channel One News would make social studies come alive for students. Schools thought that students would become more civic-minded if they better understood what was happening with world events.
The reality of Channel One News today is the program is jammed pack with filler content. Content that might appeal to young people, but isn’t worth the sacrifice of school time.
On this day, Channel One spends over 5 minutes on two stories that have nothing to do with hard news. This is fairly typical.
