Channel One News is not only advertising a movie (unrated as of now) to preteens and elementary school-age children on their website (and more than likely on their middle school and high school TV broadcasts), but is also running a contest for the film. The picture below is the top of Channelone.com’s home page on September 14. Notice there is no banner ad at the top – just purple. That is very unusual since Channel One saturates their classroom TV show and their website with advertising. The ad promoting the movie and contest is at the bottom.
A young person clicking on the ad above goes to the contest site where Alloy Digital (sister company to Channel One) hopes to collect an abundance of personal information from the student.
Channel One News shouldn’t be advertising any movie to young people. Channel One’s has a ugly track record of advertising movies that normalize teen drinking, drug use, and that contain sexual and violent content. Channel One promised schools they would never advertise a movie that did not have an MPAA rating, but like this time, Channel One has done this before.
Now there is little danger that this movie would be rated R, but it could be a PG-13. That should matter since Channel One says they don’t advertise PG-13 movies to middle school students. Advertising this movie on their website of course means children of all ages are targets of the ad campaign.
