From Jim Metrock:
It’s been over six months since Channel One News taped their last show.
Schools no longer have to suffer Channel One’s daily 12-minute commercial assault on students. The blaring classroom TV set no longer comes on automatically. [Channel One had rigged all their TVs to come on without human effort because they knew teachers might not voluntarily turn on their show.]
One of the more odorous things Channel One News did, on a regular basis, was to make schoolchildren perform like circus animals for Channel One’s financial benefit.
Channel One News was losing schools at an incredible rate for over fifteen years. Every week schools would be tearing up their contracts with the New York-based marketing firm. Advertisers paid lower and lower ad rates to Channel One because of the mass exodus of student viewers.
To help stem the losses, Channel One needed to show schools that other schools loved the program and were not dropping out. Channel One needed schools to send in videos of their students showering Channel One News with love. The message: See this school loves us. Your school would be crazy to stop showing our program.
So Channel One showed videos from students at the beginning of their show. Students would perform tricks and stunts and get some publicity for their school, BUT Channel One would only air the video if the young people read the Channel One scripted line: Channel One News starts right now!
These videos were commercials promoting Channel One News. What adult would make kids perform like trained seals to help market their pathetic TV show? Channel One should have paid all the students who performed in these video commercials. But of course, Channel One didn’t have the money or the will to pay students a penny for their efforts.
This holiday season we have much to be thankful for. I’m thankful that Channel One News and their kiddie marketing employees are no longer commercially exploiting American schoolchildren.
Examples of the dozens of school “shout out” videos promoting Channel One News.
