Those are the words of Dean Nelson the Chairman and CEO of Channel One’s parent company, PRIMEDIA. What he is talking about is Channel One News. He said this at the Credit Suisse First Boston 2005 Global Week Conference held in New York City on December 6. You can hear his comments in full context at this link...
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Does your school still have Channel One News?
Learn how to unplug
Houghton Mifflin/Channel One News
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.
“If It Proves To Be A Problem, We Will Sell It.”
Guest News Anchors
From Jim Metrock: Those familiar with Channel One News know their strange practice of allowing actors and musicians to become official news anchors on their in-school TV show. It becomes stranger when Channel One’s news department violates its own published news standards and lets these guest anchors plug their latest TV show, movie, CD or whatever they need help...
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Nag Factor
Screen shot of today’s commercial shown in middle and high schools. It’s getting near Christmas and toy and game commercials are filling up Channel One’s’ ad spots. Companies like Nintendo like the captive audience that Channel One claims it can deliver. On today’s show, students watched a commercial that offers them a “free” video game if...
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Did Channel One’s Onerous Contract Injure Girl?
Student’s parents may sue over fainting incident By Amanda Falcone, Record-Journal staff WALLINGFORD — The parents of a Moran Middle School student are threatening to sue the Board of Education, claiming she fainted and hit her head after her teacher made her stand in a hot classroom in September. Taylor Nardi, 11, was watching News Channel One...
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Channel One President Made Over $1.7 Million In Compensation
We just found the above information on Forbes.com. This is incredible. It is an indication of the massive amounts of money Channel One News siphons off from public schools. Although he had a few other responsibilities, Jim Ritts’ main job was president of Channel One News. This report was for fiscal year 2004. A year that was not...
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Rome High School
From Jim Metrock: I’ve always liked Rome. Rome, Georgia, not Italy. (I’ve never been to Italy.) When I was in the wire business back in the 80’s, I had a lot of great customers in Rome. It’s a beautiful little town in a scenic part of northwest Georgia. So it was sad to come to Rome this...
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More On RENT
Above: A scene from the movie Channel One advertised to middle school students. This is Angel. He has just taken off his wig. Angel is a drag queen, cross-dresser, transvestite (take your pick) and has a prominent role in Rent. Channel One News believes that this is appropriate content for middle school kids. Obligation doesn’t. In the movie, Angel...
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And They Wonder Why Schools Are Turning Their TV Show Off
From Jim Metrock: Today, Channel One News had a “special” news anchor share the duties with C1N regular Errol Barnett. The guest news anchor was Rosario Dawson. She has a mission being on Channel One this morning. Channel One would tell us that that mission is to help promote tolerance, to help students overcome their prejudices. There...
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C1 Offering School Employees “Stuff” To Help Advertiser
Lawrence County (AL) Board of Education Code of Conduct for school employees. It may be because Channel One doesn’t have any educators on its staff. It may be because they never replaced Paul Folkermer as their one-time “Education VP.” (That was more window dressing than anything.) Or it may be because Channel One has never respected teachers. Anyway,...
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Ironic
Added December 5, 2005 – Obligation has received several emails from PRIMEDIA, Channel One’s parent company, protesting our articles that state Channel One has “sold” news anchor positions to advertisers. The important parts of their correspondence are copied below. George Clooney was not a guest news anchor and was simply a guest plugging a movie. It is apparent now that...
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