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: Why would Channel One News tell students that civilization may be coming to an end during their lifetime? Only Ms. CJ Ketter could answer that. I have written Ms. Kettler asking her to at least correct the Channel One story as reported on March...
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From Jim Metrock: How could I have forgotten the unforgettable Jim Steyer. Of all the people I have crossed paths with in the battle against commercialism in classrooms, I rank Jim Steyer near the bottom. There is good reason to do so. The other day I wrote an article about the “education” panel session...
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From Jim Metrock: I contacted two people at the Starkville School District in Starkville, MS and found they are no longer honoring the viewing requirements of Channel One’s contract. I hope my letter to the editor in 2012 had some part to play in this. Voice of the people June 18, 2012 Channel One ...
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See the March 20 article I Made a Mistake for a correction to this March 17 article. From Jim Metrock: It is good to see Channel One’s CEO getting out and about. The public doesn’t see Ms. CJ Kettler much, and you don’t see much of her even in this Channel One picture. I’m having...
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From Jim Metrock: Channel One News is a shell of its former self in part because of a history of bad decisions by their management. Here’s a big one. I came across this old email to a staffer at Senator Richard Shelby’s office. In 2004, the Senator’s office helped me get in front...
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From Jim Metrock: Back in 2006 the U.S. Senate Committee on Finance released a minority report on the Investigation of Jack Abramoff’s Use of Tax-Exempt Organizations. The report painted an ugly picture of Channel One’s efforts through “Casino” Jack Abramoff and other to misuse various tax-exempt organizations to “bash” people and organizations critical...
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From Jim Metrock: This surprises me. Nordstrom department store is advertising on Channel One News. I have never seen them advertise before. Nordstrom should know better than to waste valuable school time promoting their company in any way. Time to convince Blake Nordstrom, Nordstrom’s CEO, to have his ad agency drop...
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From Jim Metrock: Channel One News has a long history of advertising junk food in American classrooms. The company knew their ads were contributing in a very significant way to the growing obesity crisis among young people, but they kept pitching the junk to kids. Obligation and others helped put pressure...
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From Jim Metrock: Above is a press release from Channel One. No company is better at making a little thing sound like a big thing. Below I have copied the press release word for word. To make it more readable I broke the content up as if it was going to be read on...
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