Channel One Suffers Major Blow In Tennessee

November 26, 2002

Although it was a Texas advertising executive, Ed Winter, who created
Channel One back in 1988, he was working for Chris Whittle at the time
in Knoxville, Tennessee. In the early 90’s, Whittle’s Channel One saturated
Tennessee schools. Few states have a higher percentage of schoolchildren
under contract to Channel One. That is why the action of the Nashville
Metro school system is so important.

From The Tennessean (Nashville) newspaper:

Metro schools cancel Channel One
New TVs will replace monitors provided by programmer that mixed news,
ads

By NATALIA MIELCZAREK
Staff Writer, The Tennessean, November 25, 2002 (Nashville, Tennessee)

Metro schools are getting rid of Channel One monitors and replacing them
with new 27-inch televisions after the administration pulled the plug
on Channel One service this school year.

Channel One officials said they respect Metro’s decision to end a decade-long
partnership but are disappointed.

Until this school year, Metro students watched 12-minute programs every
day
that featured 10 minutes of news and two minutes of commercials. With
that
came optional two-hour specials that covered a variety of topics, from
AIDS
to world hunger.

In the early 1990s, after Channel One launched its free programming,
a number
of parents, teachers and educational organizations nationwide protested
against exposing children to commercials in a school setting.

Many schools decided against teaming up with Channel One because of the
ads.
Some parents sued their school systems for forcing children to be exposed
to
commercials.

"There are people who philosophically agree with commercials in schools,"
said Lance Lott, chief technology officer with Metro schools. "We’re
landing
on the other side of this argument."

Channel One monitors were provided to Metro high and some middle schools
in
the early 1990s. In return, the schools committed to airing the programs
every morning.

Now, with no agreement, the monitors are being taken back by Channel
One and replaced by Metro to provide teachers with equipment to continue
showing
instructional videos and school announcements. The project will cost
$1 million, Lott said.

It’s rare that schools don’t renew their commitment to air the programs,
Channel One officials said. About 40% of secondary public and private
schools nationwide show the program, they said.

"We don’t believe that news in America should be coming from the national
government," said Jeff Ballabon, vice president of public policy
with Primedia, the company that owns Channel One. "It should be
coming from an independent source, and that’s why we have commercials."

Ballabon said that only 2% to 3% of Channel One programs is advertising. "And
a substantial amount of the 2-3% is not advertising of products. For
example,
we run anti-drug messages. We respect the decision of Nashville school
system, but we also respect the fact that the renewal rate nationwide
is 99%."

Hillwood High School teacher Catherine Sanders parted with Channel One
two
years ago. She said the programming became "slick, and the stories
became too
in-depth for freshmen to understand because they didn’t have the educational
foundation."

"For eight years I used it every day," she said. "The most wonderful
thing about Channel One was that the news was coming to students every day and
they
stayed current on national and international events."

And what about the ads? "Most of the time the kids discussed what
they saw on the news during commercials," Sanders said.

Two eighth-graders at Wright Middle school, Erica Mackel and Deata Slaughter,
said they’re not as informed about world affairs as they used to be in
seventh grade.

"It was completely different than regular news," Deata said. "They
give stories about teenagers and what we have to go through, and they also talked
about what’s going on around the world. They can relate to us."

From Jim Metrock: As usual, you have to come behind the Channel One people
and set the facts straight. Jeff Ballabon has a real problem with reality.
Channel One has EXPANDED their advertising beyond what the Metro school
system has bargained for back when they signed up with Channel One.

Channel One has changed the "news" portion of their program
to accomodate advertisers. This nets them more money than they could bring
in with just their two minutes of formal ads. Channel One now regularly
allows guest hosts to come on the program. The guest hosts are usually
musical groups whose recording company has paid Channel One to give the
artist(s) exposure to this large captive audience of CD-buying students.
OK Go, a new rock group, hosted the show yesterday, November 25, and this
new musical act got to promote themselves and Channel One gladly played
snippets of their songs during the school-time broadcast. Mr. Ballabon
doesn’t consider guest hosts plugging their CDs, tours, movies or TV shows "commercial
time." He must consider that "hard news."

Ballabon doesn’t tell the public about the added commercial time when
Cingular Wireless gets to sponsor the "Question of the Day." Or
Gatorade has an entire segment called "Play of the Week". This
was never allowed before on Channel One since it mixes advertising with
the editorial content of the non-commercial part of the show. Channel One
is hurting for revenue as schools leave them and as advertisers think twice
about being on such a controversial program. That is what pushes Channel
One to increase the percentage of the show devoted to selling.

Mr. Ballabon appears to have never watched the show he works for. He failed
to tell the Nashville reporter that Channel One has bonus commercials after
the ending credits and that the TV show is set to run those even though
the 12-minute time limit for Channel One is always exceeded.

Ballabon failed to mention that Channel One has decked out one of its
own anchors, Derrick Shore, with clothing from Columbia Sportswear during
their coverage of the Olympics and at the start of each show the students
were told that "Mr. Shore’s outerwear is provided by Columbia Sportswear." Everytime
Shore was on the screen he was wearing a Columbia jacket, even if he was
indoors. The Columbia logo was always in the frame. Shores in effect did
a Columbia sales pitch every time he was on the screen. Does Jeff Ballabon
think that isn’t commercial content?

The Channel One anchors endlessly urge children to visit ChannelOne.com
where numerous ads for Seventeen magazine, Nintendo games and other products
will greet them. Ballabon dismisses those as non-commercial in nature.
Luckily the Metro school board knew more about Channel One than Mr. Ballabon.

Contrary to what Mr. Ballabon says, Channel One IS the news from the government.
Channel One even brags that the federal government is their Number One
sponsor. Between the military recruitment ads and the Office for National
Drug Control Pollicy PSAs (which are often age-inappropriate and ineffective),
Channel One owes its existence to our federal government. We now have 8
million students being exposed to a news show put on, to a very large degree,
by our federal government. That is scary to liberals and conservatives
and to anyone that believes news should be free from any and all government
influence.

Bravo to the Metro schools in Nashville. We expect many other Tennessee
schools, as well as schools across the country, to take similar action.
Channel One is a sad anachronism that thankfully, on this day before Thanksgiving
Day, appears to be in decline across our wonderful country. No school system
can tolerate Channel One’s commercial assault anymore.