From Jim Metrock: It was never meant to be: Channel One News and Promethean, Ltd. These two troubled companies became partners in the summer of 2011. The partnership didn’t make any sense for Promethean the maker of classroom whiteboards. It did make sense for Channel One. Teaming with a well known company like Promethean could only add some credibility to Channel One News.
Kent Haehl was Channel One’s CEO at the time of the partnership. Haehl earned his paycheck by convincing Promethean to partner with the pariah of education. But like all Channel One CEOs, Haehl got the boot and in 2012 was replaced with Ms. CJ Kettler.
Sometime shortly after Ms. Kettler took the reins of the company, Promethean and Channel One started drifting apart. In the early days of the partnership, if a school wanted to sign up for Channel One service, Channel One’s website directed them to Promethean’s website! That’s how close these two companies became. That all ended during Ms. Kettler’s watch. I suspect Promethean realized Channel One’s “digital content” was relatively unimportant. I suspect that Ms. Kettler over promised and under undelivered. Maybe Ms. Kettler’s secretive nature and distaste for transparency with the public that scared Promethean away.
For Obligation’s part, we tied every misstep of Channel One to Promethean too. It only made sense. They were partners.
In the summer of 2013, I was in San Antonio attending the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) conference. There I met with officials from Promethean. One fairly high up executive told me that there were “issues” with Channel One and that the relationship was changing. And so it did.
Today Promethean’s websites have no meaningful content about Channel One. Type in “Channel One” in a Promethean search engine and you either get nothing or you get a list of headlines about Channel One whose associated articles were stripped from the site. All such search results direct the reader to go to Channelone.com.
Articles about Channel One and Channel One News Interactiv have been removed from Promethean’s websites. People in search of information about Channel One are told where to go.
Below: The Good Old Days.
Promethean: Lighting the flame of controversy in elementary schools.
