Channel One News is a youth marketing company whose main purpose is to get advertising to a captive audience of impressionable schoolchildren. The company loans a school TV equipment in exchange for the school’s contractual pledge to show students a daily, 12-minute, hyper-commercial, TV program called Channel One News. Students lose one hour a week of schools time, which equates to one lost week of instructional time (32 hours) per year. No educational organization endorses the use of Channel One News.
Channel One has fallen on very hard times. Once they claimed over 8 million students were under contract. Since 1997 they have continued to lose schools and now they claim “nearly five million” students and the true figure is probably lower.
In May 2014, publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt acquired Channel One from ZelnickMedia the makers of the ultra-violent Grand Thief Auto video game series. Houghton Mifflin did not disclose the purchase price.
At the end of 2014 most of Channel One’s full-paying advertisers have abandoned the program.
Pop Quiz: Maggie Rulli has just… January 2, 2026 I just saw Maggie Rulli reporting a story on ABC Nightly News. She’s part of the holiday crew filling in for the A team. I am reminded of being so disappointed in this young lady for staying four long years at Channel One News. I...
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From Jim Metrock: About six years ago, I met several Edmodo employees at an ISTE trade show in Philadelphia. They had a booth in the exhibit hall. They were trying their best to sell their company to teachers and school administrators. One would think it was easy to “sell” their company to schools because...
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Kent Haehl was Mr. Channel One News. He presided over the company for six years from 2007 to 2013. He tried to keep Channel One afloat, but it became a smaller and much less-respected company under his leadership. Now, Kent Haehl is making money selling… er… cannabis. He’s one smooth operator. He knows what...
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Channel One News had many on-air personalities who acted goofy. Tom Hanson is shown here mugging for the camera. At the time, he was trying to look “younger” for his captive audience of middle school students. Many Channel One “reporters” thought that acting immature – making silly faces – would fool students into thinking...
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It’s been a tough road for many who hoped to leap from Channel One to legitimate journalism.
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Channel One News has been gone since 2018. However, there is concern that some new youth marketing company will try to bring back the company or parts of it. That is why Obligation will release a video series documenting the abundant problems with Channel One. Before the videos start in August, let’s reintroduce a...
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Channel One News was a classroom marketing company. It grew at a phenomenal rate in the mid-90s until it ran into its toughest opposition: Obligation, Inc. My name is Jim Metrock. I’m president of Obligation. I am one of the reasons Channel One News exited classrooms. I am one of the reasons millions of...
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Edmodo’s partner in school advertising “crime” is NexxGen News. NexxGen News appears to be a cheat clone of the discredited Channel One News program. It’s hard to see schools falling for this mess. It took over a month for NexxGen to generate 3 “likes” on Twitter.
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