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.
On September 8, students saw a report on the rescue of an American hostage in Iraq. Channel One News could have told this story without video or even pictures. An anchor could have just looked in the camera and read the teleprompter just like they often do on other news stories. They had plenty of footage to choose...
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On Tuesday, September 13, students watched a violent ad for a new horror TV series called Supernatural. Above: (From the commercial shown in middle schools and in some fifth grade classrooms.) Those two marks on this man’s forehead are drops of blood. The students see one drop, then another. The man is seeing something...
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Here are several frames from a controversial new commercial running on Channel One News. (This was shown to high school students, middle school students as well as some fifth graders.) Channel One’s little horror film starts with a young couple in a parked car. Everything is very romantic until… The woman hears “something” outside the car. She turns...
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"Today we know very well cigarette smoking kills 4000 smokers, 50,000 nonsmokers and more important, we have strong data that smoking in the movies encourages kids to smoke," says Dr. Stanton Glantz, director of UCSF Center for Tobacco Control Research and Education. A new report by Commercial Alert shows that 6 out...
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On Friday, September 9, Channel One advertised two junk food products. Hubba Bubba Max bubble gum and Gatorade. Hubba Bubba is one of Wrigley’s sugary products. The commercial today was a new one featuring a polar bear who stuffs his face with Hubba Bubba bubble gum. The ad is a satire on the R-rated movie Fargo. Commercial content...
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Students who wear glasses must dread being forced to watch Channel One. Earlier this year we reported on an insensitive commercial for Acuvue contact lens. This month Channel One has approved another hard-hitting Acuvue ad aimed at teens and preteens. In this ad a male student is a relay runner on the school track team. He likes being...
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Scenes from "The OC" (Second Season) "OC" stands for Orange County, CA. The OC is one of Fox Network’s TV shows that normalize alcohol and drug use among young people. The sexual content on the show is extreme. The OC made headlines in its second season when two characters develop a lesbian relationship. The...
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"Reporter" interviews students about Clear & Clean. Guess what? They like it a lot. Mixing news with advertising is routine at Channel One. any journalist weep. Since the beginning of this school year, Channel One has been running a Clear & Clean ad that would make true journalists weep. After a regular, network...
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If your middle school student didn’t know the street names for methamphetamine, Melissa Knowles, Channel One anchor will make sure he or she learns them. All these pictures are from Channel One’s feed to middle school students. Some in the audience are as young as ten. Students are shown the various ways that meth is ingested. On one hand...
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Verizon Wireless has become one of the main advertisers on Channel One. Verizon didn’t ask for permission to come into classrooms. They did not seek the approval of any school board or superintendent or even the "OK" from principals. Verizon is taking up school time with its advertising only because they inked a deal...
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