Ken McNatt has done a content analysis of 25 episodes of Channel One News. We have included his observations along with a link to his web site for the full story. “The breakdown for the first 25 episodes can be summed up as follows: – About 12.25 minutes per episode – A little over 7.25 minutes of...
Read More »
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.
Breakdown
“Recalling My Channel One Days”
http://www.thetranscript.com/Stories/0,1413,103%257E9043%257E2569420,00.html A former indentured student writes about her Channel One News experiences in the North Adams Transcript (MA). “There are also better ways to encourage teenagers to take an interest in the world and its news than plugging them into the commercial laden news magazine called Channel One.” Thanks to Ken McNatt.
Read More »
One Million Children Disappear… and that’s a good thing.
We have reported about Channel One’s unethical use of school time to advertise the movie “Finding Gracie.” Channel One violated its own “news standards” by merging advertising into the news portion of the show. “Finding Gracie” is not a typical movie. It is a gimmick by another one of Channel One’s advertisers – Gatorade. Gatorade is helping to...
Read More »
Read The Book? Or Watch The Movie?
Stephanie Smith is a Channel One News employee. She wrote this article that “winks” at cheating on a book report. This Channel One writer knows she is writing for children. She makes it clear that she knows many would think of watching the movie version as opposed to reading an assigned book. Excuse us, Stephanie, you are wrong. Most...
Read More »
St. Mary High School, O’Neill, Nebraska
You wouldn’t think ANY Catholic school would have a contract with Channel One News. A church-run school that tolerates the advertising of drug and alcohol movies and sexually charged movies and TV shows to students is a church-run school that has many more problems than Channel One. (Note: Channel One continues to advertise PG-13 movies to middle schoolchildren.)...
Read More »
Kranks
Kent Haehl is Channel One’s sales manager. His job is to find and sign new advertisers. He knows the people at Sony Pictures very well. Haehl agreed to promote Sony’s drug/alcohol drenched "Loser" movie in 2000, the raunchy animated 2002 movie "Eight Crazy Nights" and this year’s sex and drug comedy "50 First Dates."...
Read More »
Another Junk Food On Channel One
Channel One News has a long history of advertising junk food to students and their newest ad campaign was unveiled several weeks ago. Kellogg’s Pop Tarts are now a major advertiser on Channel One’s in-school TV show. Last school year, Channel One heavily advertised Kellogg’s new product called SnakStix. Obligation’s Jim Metrock said, "Channel...
Read More »
Thursday’s News On Wednesday
From Jim Metrock: Ken McNatt just sent me and email telling me Channel One had posted the script of their Thursday show on their web site. I received the email at 10:40 PM CST tonight Wednesday, November 17. The script of the completed show is below. If you are wondering how a news organization...
Read More »
We’re All Bozos On The Bus
Well, they’re back on the bus. Those lovely bozos from Channel One are back on the road trying to keep the remaining schools they have from canceling their contracts. Relatively poor states like Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, and Louisiana have a disproportionate number of public schools that still rent TV equipment...
Read More »
Did This Man Steal Your Tax Money?
Please visit the National Campaign Against Channel One for more information. The 2004-05 school year for Channel One News marks an aggressive and disturbing new trend toward what we will call "Total Commercialism." Channel One is pushing the envelope every way they can to get more and more revenue-generating commercial messages into the 12-13...
Read More »
Copyright © 2026 Obligation, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
Magazine Premium created by Themes by bavotasan.com.
Magazine Premium created by Themes by bavotasan.com.