Destined to fail. Judy Harris, Channel One CEO
Her company’s financial results are no longer reported by the parent company.
Primedia, Channel One’s parent company, announced their 2006 year-end results this past Tuesday. For the first time in years, Channel One was not a source of embarrassment to Primedia officials. That was because Channel One was no longer considered a part of Primedia (financially-speaking).
Channel One is now considered a "discontinued operation" by Primedia, meaning Primedia is desperately trying to unload Channel One, and the other companies in their Education unit. There were no revenues figures from Channel One; no expenses. Channel One has been relegated to footnote status. During Tuesday’s earnings conference call there was no mention of Channel One’s CEO Judy Harris and how she was an expert at finding new streams of revenue. Primedia’s experiment with the untested Harris has come to a sad, but inevitable conclusion.
"Raise your hand if you would like to be a CEO."
When previous CEO Jim Ritts was given his marching papers, Channel One needed to replace him with an experienced CEO. The company needed a CEO that had experience turning around the financial fortunes of companies. Ms. Harris had never been a CEO. She never had top-level experience turning a money-loser into a winner. Primedia’s management got what they should have expected.
The company is living on organizational handouts like the one from the Knight Foundation. The daily "news" show they put out now has little to do with NEWS, and that must be a great disappointment to the handful of educators that try to remain loyal Channel One supporters.
During the Primedia conference call, it was mentioned that a resolution to Channel One’s status should come before the end of the next quarter (the end of June). Will Channel One be bought? If it is, it will be at a distressed, fire sale price. If it is bought, the purchaser would probably want to clean house from top to bottom. There are not that many people that needed to be replaced.
Possibly Channel One will just close down. The contract with schools says that the company has no requirement to continue to provide schools with the daily show, not that any school would think about suing Channel One to force them to continue to deliver their almost-painful-to-watch infotainment TV show.
