From Jim Metrock: Yet another
Hollywood movie studio paid Channel One News to allow one of their
actors to be an anchor – for the entire show. Schools across the
country are turning off the controversial in-school TV show because
of things like this.
Channel One News under its current president, Jim Ritts, has greatly
expanded its advertising content. Ritts must know he is playing with
dynamite, but only by intermixing commercial content with the "news" can
he increase his revenue. His company promised school board members,
superintendents, educators and parents that Channel One News would
not have more than two minutes of ads. That is a joke. They issued
news standards that specifically declared they would never allow
a guest host to plug a movie or ANY product. Well, Ritts and Channel
One News lied. Obligation has nailed Ritts and his crew so many times
it isn’t funny.
Channel One has run amok with advertising. No school board member
ever, EVER, gave Channel One News permission to use guest hosts
to pitch
their movies, CDs and TV shows.
The photo above is from Channel One’s picture gallery on their
web site. Channelone.com is heavily promoting the movie too and
they
are running a contest for the movie, Agent Cody Banks. Frankie
Muniz is
the star of this movie. The rating for the movie is PG. No movie
should be advertised in any public school, no matter what the rating,
because
that isn’t why taxpayers are paying taxes. It is quite remarkable
that Channel One has been allowed to advertise any movie to schoolchildren.
Sometimes Channel One’s long history of promoting vulgar and violent
movies overshadows the offensiveness of advertising any form of
entertainment to schoolchildren.
[HELLOS]
[AIRDATE=2/27/03]
[PRO=ENAS]
[TALENT=DERRICK & FRANKIE]
(DERRICK/VO)
HE’S A TEENAGER WORKING FOR THE C-I-A IN HIS NEW MOVIE, AGENT
CODY BANKS -AND TODAY HE’S POSING AS A CHANNEL ONE ANCHOR
(DERRICK ON CAM)
HEY GUYS I’M DERRICK SHORE – JOINED TODAY BY ACTOR, FRANKIE
MUNIZ – HOW ARE YOU DOING?
(FRANKIE ON CAM)
I’M WELL – THANKS FOR HAVING ME HERE-
(DERRICK ON CAM)
OUR PLEASURE – AND YOU’RE JOINING US ON AN ALL REQUEST THURSDAY
WHICH MEANS STUDENTS OUT THERE WENT TO THE WEBSITE AND CHOSE
THEIR FAVORITE MUSICAL ARTISTS AND TODAY WE PLAY THEIR SONGS.
*
*(FRANKIE ON CAM)
THAT’S COOL -SO LET’S GO STARTED – IT’S FEBRUARY 27TH AND THIS
IS CHANNEL ONE NEWS
Early review of this Channel One News-promoted PG movie:
"
Agent Cody Banks reimagines your average James Bond flick as kiddie
porn. Frankie Muniz (“Malcolm in the Middle”) stars as
an elite undercover agent for the CIA advised to win the affections
of a young hottie (Hilary Duff) so the government can move in on
the girl’s father, who’s built a special kind of Nanobot
that can do more than just clean oceans of accidental oil-spills.
The “creepy” CIA trains Cody on how to talk to girls
and ends up promoting child pornography as a result. The young boy
is handed X-ray glasses for no apparent reason other than to give
the creepy older men of the CIA a peek at what lies beneath a 15-year-old
rich girl’s couture outfit. A simulated teenage girl comes
on to Cody but the only attention she gets is from the group of 40-year-olds
trying to cramp his style. Cody’s “handler”/“partner” Ronica
(Angie Harman) seems to have stepped out of a Playboy centerfold
and comes with her own soundtrack. Her eye-magnet breasts are easily
the film’s most inspired creations; all other gadgets and gizmos
may as well be lame rejects from the set of Spy Kids. Cody’s
mission to save his young girlfriend is sweet enough but one has
to wonder what kind of video collection the film’s four screenwriters
have stashed in their basements that the relationship between adults
and kids in the film is so uncomfortably hot-to-trot. The Feds have
more evidence here than they have on Pee Wee Herman."
Ed Gonzalez
©
slant magazine, 2003.
