p>Today was the first day for the new Alloy-owned Channel One News show. This press release was issued this morning. Channel One has always been a company that over-promises and under-delivers. "New Digital Technology" sounds impressive. It is meant to keep schools from dropping Channel One’s service. This summer has apparently been an unmitigated disaster for the company. Channel One admits they have lost at least one million students over the summer. That is a blow to their already weak chances of survival.
Let’s look closer at Channel One’s press release. Obligation’s comments start with "HOLD IT" and are in red.
Press Release
Source: Channel One
Channel One News Heads ‘Back to School’ with New Digital Technology
Tuesday September 4, 8:50 am ET
– Award-Winning Teen Newscast Goes Digital to Deliver Enhanced Viewing Experience, Better Engage Interest in Civics and Current Affairs Headlines –
NEW YORK–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Channel One News, the preeminent
HOLD IT: Calling your company "preeminent" is laughable. It would be acceptable if you quoted someone ELSE who called your company "preeminent." If a respected journalism publication called Channel One News "preeminent" then it would carry some importance. That has never happened. This term comes from the creative mind of Amanda Cheslock who works for Channel One’s public relations firm Sloane and Company.
news and public affairs content provider for teens reaching more than six million students
HOLD IT: This is big news. Just a few years ago Channel One was boasting about having over 8 million students under contract. Just this spring Channel One was saying they had over 7 million students. Now it’s "more than 6 million." All these figures are exaggerated. Obligation believes the vast majority of schools with Channel One’s service have not honored the Channel One contract for years.
in middle schools and high schools across the country, today announced the roll-out of new digital technology in Channel One News schools across the country. The movement to digital technology enables the networks award-winning content to be a sharper, crisper viewing experience in classrooms
HOLD IT: Channel One is trying to pull a fast one by playing with words. "Sharper, crisper viewing experience"? "Digital technology"? They want to create an impression that students will be seeing a digital picture in their classroom. Obligation expected Channel One’s long overdue upgrade to include plasma or LCD TV screens. These would provide a very clear picture and would for the first time provide a TV screen that could be seen by all students no matter where they sat in the classroom. Channel One’s old 19" TV sets were way too small for a standard size classroom.
Now we know that Alloy and Channel One have apparently given up on replacing the TV monitors and instead are only upgrading their head-end unit. (This is the piece of equipment that sends the program out to individual classrooms.) This is a maintenance upgrade more than anything. The DVR (see below) will afford much more storage space for taping but will only modestly improve the picture quality.
Think of it this way: If you sign up for digital cable and high definition TV service at your home and you don’t invest in a TV set that can display the better picture you are wasting your money. Replacing monitors will cost Alloy and Channel One over a hundred million dollars and they won’t – and can’t – do that.
As with most press releases, this one uses a lot of impressive words to mislead people. Channel One’s "digital revolution" is a perfect example of "too little, too late."
across the country and online via ChannelOne.com. The roll-out is a significant part of an evolution that most recently includes the global access to breaking news stories through a relationship with NBC News.
HOLD ON: The "relationship" with NBC News is as much about advertising as it is news. NBC is very forthright in saying they want to use Channel One News to promote their brand of news. They want to make students prefer the NBC brand of news and sitcoms. NBC shows will be advertised on Channel One. NBC is not only a provider of news stories for Channel One, they are the largest advertiser on the show. All of the major networks are losing their audience. This has been going on for years as cable channels and the Internet have eroded viewership. The fact that NBC entered into a partnership with the extremely controversial Channel One News show and the equally controversial Alloy Media and Marketing company shows how desperate NBC is for viewers.
Designed expressly for Channel One News by Thomson Consumer Electronics, the new digital head-end receivers are feature-rich, quieter, reliable with a higher storage capacity than the analog receivers previously used. The millions of teens who turn to the programming as their only source of news will experience a better viewing experience, bringing them closer to the big issues of the day. The many educators who rely on Channel One News as a platform for classroom discussion will benefit from improved management capabilities such as the ability to burn content direct to DVD’s, and distribute content to multiple classrooms at a given location, on a live, recorded, or on-demand basis, and at their discretion.
HOLD IT: See what we are talking about. The piece of equipment that records the satellite transmission will be digital, but nothing else will be. The old analog headend units required too much maintenance which was costly for Channel One. They hired a company called Convergent Media Systems to send maintenance people to schools to maintain their old equipment. These new digital headend units will greatly decrease maintenance expenses but will do little to make the show a better experience for young people.
In tandem with the roll-out of digital equipment inside the schools, Channel One News is investing in upgrades to ChannelOne.com and ‘Livewire’, its 24/7 broadband video news channel, to ensure the highest quality viewing experience anytime, anywhere.
HOLD IT: The video quality of Channel One’s "Livewire" broadcast at channelone.com is worse than before. Check it out. The web site is a disaster. Very little is updated. Old articles abound on the site that has been abandoned for almost all of the summer months. Channelone.com’s news headlines are days old. For the last few years Channel One has provided teachers with very simple lesson plans for their daily show. Alloy has apparently discontinued the plans and the daily script of the show. Anything Alloy can do to minimize expenses they are doing.
Said Matt Diamond, CEO of Alloy, Channel One News parent company, "We’re committed to and excited about our significant, initial investment in digital technology.
HOLD IT: This is a joke. Mr. Diamond knows that the $8 to $12 million Alloy has approved for Channel One’s upgrade is woefully too little. His lack of commitment to improving Channel One may be why so many employees have departed the new Alloy-owned Channel One.
By using better technology to broadcast our unique content, we can positively impact teens’ interest and engagement in civics education and current affairs."
HOLD IT: Matt Diamond is a marketer. He is not an educator. He is not a journalist. He bought a nearly bankrupt Channel One so he could use it for market research and to help promote his other teen and preteen products like the raunchy teen novels and very dangerous message boards on their Alloy.com site. The only "current affairs" Mr. Diamond knows anything about are the steamy sex scenes in his Alloy-backed Gossip Girl books and soon to be TV show. These Alloy books border on pornography. If you doubt this, go to the library and check one out. Mr. Diamond and Alloy are making a killing off selling these vulgar, drug-drenched books to kids.
Diamond added, "In terms of the upgrade to digital this is a launch year for Channel One News. When we looked out across the network, we saw this as the immediate and pivotal next piece to a process that will involve more enhancements. We will always seek out ways to make our content easier to teach and integrate into the learning environment, taking cues from new classroom technology like whiteboards and integrating student feedback and opinion more frequently into our platform."
HOLD IT: "Integrating student feedback and opinion into our platform" is a bunch of gobbledygook. What is Mr. Diamond trying to say? You can bet he is very concerned about "student feedback" because that is what he has spent his adult life doing: obtaining information from teens and children and then selling it to companies that will use the information to better focus their sales pitches to their young target market. All parents should be very concerned now that Mr. Diamond is using Channel One and their web site to harvest data from students.
The first of the digital receivers have begun rolling out in time for the 2007-2008 school season. Approximately 1,000 Channel One News schools are expected to have the technology installed by the end of September, with remaining schools to be serviced over the next several months. The migration to digital comes on the heels of a successful pilot with Thomson conducted last year in more than one hundred Channel One News schools representing a range of geographies nationwide.
About Channel One
Broadcasting since 1990, Peabody and Webby Award-winning Channel One is the preeminent news and public affairs content provider reaching more than six million teens in middle schools and high schools across the country, nearly 25% of teenagers in the U.S. In recent months, Channel One News has covered fast-breaking world events from regions such as Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Thailand, Sri Lanka, Jordan, Cuba, Venezuela, North Korea, Myanmar, and Qatar. Channel One News programming has been featured on leading networks and news programs, including CNN, ABC News, the WB, Nightline, and The Today Show. Visit the Webby Award-winning website ChannelOne.com to learn more. Channel One is an Alloy Media + Marketing Company (NASDAQ: ALOY – News).
HOLD IT: If Channel One News is so good why are schools dropping the program at an incredible rate? Why did the company go from hundreds of millions of dollars in net worth to a net worth of zero?
Contact:
Channel One:
Sloane & Company
Amanda Cheslock, 212-446-1884
[email protected]
