Press Releases

It’s fun to read a press release from Channel One News. They are usually wonderful examples of how a company can make something of very little substance sound important. The releases usually contain a large number of over-the-top adjectives.

Several years ago Channel One hired a public relations firm to help improve its lousy image. Channel One had advertised movies that normalized drug and alcohol use, movies with unbelievable sexual content, and of course they were daily advertising Snickers, Pepsi, and Twinkies to their young captive audience. Channel One News earned their awful reputation.

So Sloane & Company was hired to put a happy face on Channel One News. Overnight Channel One went from being a pariah of public education to a"preeminent" company of note. It was all some words thought up by the Sloane people but it sounded great.

Below are the first paragraphs from three different Channel One press releases. The subject matter of the release is not as important as the slight differences in the introductory sentence of each.

2005:
"preeminent news and public affairs content provider"
"almost eight million students"
"nearly 12,000 …schools"

2006:

"preeminent news and public affairs content provider"
"more than seven million students"(Huge drop in students.)
No number of schools given.

2007:
"preeminent news and content provider" ("public affairs" is gone)
"over six million students" (Lost a million students in 21 months?)
No number of schools given.

Corporate press releases put the best spin they can on company news. Bad news can be even be made to sound like good news. So if there is bad news in a press release, especially one written by a hired-gun public relations firm like Sloane, then you better believe the real news is even worse. Obligation believes that Channel One has a much, much smaller audience than "over six million." But taking the student audience numbers on their face value, what has happened to Channel One, by their own admission, is dramatic.

"Almost eight million" has to mean a fairly high seven million-something figure. "Almost" is more precise than "over" or "under." "Under eight million" could be anything from 7,999,999 to zero.

"Over six million" probably doesn’t mean much over six million or they would have used a different number. "6.1 million students" sounds better if it could be said.

If Channel One News was truly "preeminent" in anything, they would be gaining schools and students instead of losing them.

So the bottom line is Channel One in the 21 months between these press releases lost around two million of its captive student audience. That is a loss rate of 95,000 students each month. The average size school for Channel One is less than 650 students so they lost about 36 schools each week for those 21 months. And things have not gotten better since that time.

If anyone has seen Channel One News recently it is easy to understand why they removed "public affairs" from their description of the show. Strangely, since NBC has taken over production of the show (so they can advertise their brand to kids), the show has more filler material than before. People know what "news" is, but "content" of course can be anything.

No doubt Channel One News will continue to be the "preeminent" news show for young people until it goes out of business.