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.
From Jim Metrock: What an ugly coincidence. A day after I wrote about Channel One News airing their bizarre “Rectal Experiment” commercial in middle schools promoting their sister Alloy Media and Marketing company FindTuition.com, I receive an email from FindTuition.com promoting Alloy’s newest sex/drug/alcohol movie for young people called Sex Drive. Notice that Alloy...
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A painful commercial that young people had to watch in September and October 2008. This commercial is for a sister company of Channel One News. "Describe the picture, please," the doctor says. This is suppose to be a "funny"ad that shows how desperate students have become in their search for tuition money....
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Forget Val Emmich for the time being. That’s a story for another day. It’s the "Win a $500 shopping spree" ad that should interest parents and educators. When a young person clicks on the box, they come to the page below. To enter the "sweepstakes" they have to give up a lot of personal...
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On September 30, sixth grade students looked up as Channel One News began its daily broadcast. Something was different today. Instead of a Channel One reporter greeting the students, Kat Dennings and Michael Cera, two actors in Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, introduced themselves. They plug their movie (a violation of Channel One’s...
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Tonight’s 90210 has more teen drinking scenes. We have asked Channel One News and specifically Dr. Paul Folkemer, VP of Education, to end all advertising for TV shows and movies that encourage and promote underage drinking. Dr. Folkemer refuses to respond to our pleas, so we have put some words in his mouth. Dr....
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From Jim Metrock: Welcome to a fake interview with Martha Doyle president of EF Educational Tours. Ms. Doyle’s company has recently started advertising on Channel One News. Her commercials are now frequently heard blaring from classroom TV sets. I wrote Ms. Doyle and asked her to reconsider her support of Channel One. She...
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There’s a new movie coming out in October. From the Motion Picture Association of America website: This movie has teen drinking – a LOT of it (we’ve seen the trailer), sexual content, vulgar language, and other offensive content. To give you an idea of this movie: The main male character plays...
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A new advertiser has popped up on Channel One News. (Above) EF Educational Tours of Boston is currently running 30-second commercials on the program. (Below) They also are embedding their ads in the “news” segment. A “pop quiz” is “presented by” the company. The “pop quiz” of course has to tie into EF’s...
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Above are two frames from a 30-second commercial on Channel One News for Samurai Girl. The program is a six-hour TV miniseries. Students were forced to watch this ad during the week before the show began on September 5, 2008. Channel One’s parent company Alloy Media and Marketing created and owns the...
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