Channel One employees should let their feelings out. It is not healthy to keep all that pain bottled up inside.
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From Alloy’s April 26, 2007 SEC filing 8-K
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"Pursuant to the Channel One Asset Purchase Agreement, Alloy acquired the operating assets of Channel One from PRIMEDIA, by assuming certain liabilities of Channel One. The fair market value of the assets acquired is approximately the value of the assumed liabilities, resulting in a fair market value of zero."
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From Jim Metrock:
I’m proud of this. Zero market value. This didn’t happen just because Primedia hired a never-been-a-CEO-before Judy Harris to turn around the company. This didn’t happen just because Jack Abramoff went to jail. It happened because Obligation never stopped talking about Channel One.
The National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers opposed Channel One, but they got tired. They stopped talking about it. The Center for Commercial-Free Public Education actively fought Channel One for years, but they ran out of money and closed up shop. The National Association of Secondary School Principals opposed Channel One until Channel One offered them money to change their minds and … they changed their minds.
Obligation stayed the course. What’s more, we have the money to continue to stay the course. Now that Channel One may be morphing into something even more detrimental to schoolchildren, Obligation will commit the money and resources to assure advertisers do not come back to the show or the website, and that schools continue to drop the program.
In 1997, when Obligation posted it’s first web article about Channel One, Channel One made $30 million on $70 million sales (according to Forbes.) Today they have zero market value. They soon will have NEGATIVE market value.
Channel One should have been out of business this June. The company has been given a temporary reprieve by Matt Diamond, Alloy’s CEO. Mr. Diamond sees a diamond in the rough, where everyone else saw Channel One as poison, Mr. Diamond saw over-looked treasure.
I called Mr. Diamond’s office and spoke to his secretary. I left a message for him to call me. That was two days ago. I don’t think he is going to call. It looks like he is adopting the Judy Harris approach to dealing with opponents of Channel One. He will ignore them. To Mr. Diamond I would say he could learn something from activists that don’t like his company. It always helps to talk.
Meanwhile, Obligation will once again make sure teachers, parents, legislators, and the public understand why Channel One, now the new Channel One/Alloy (that’s what we will call it), is wrong for schools.
