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: We can assume few Sharyland Rattlers are watching Channel One or its commercials. It has to be irritate the marketing executives at Channel One to know schools are showing their TV show before school and then on top of that to be allotting 10 minutes for the 12-minute program. What’s...
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From Jim Metrock: Signs of Channel One’s ruin are everywhere. Is there a school ANYWHERE in the U.S. that is honoring Channel One’s viewing requirements?? I don’t know of any, but there certainly could be a school somewhere that does. South Caldwell High in Hudson, North Carolina shows Channel One before school. The...
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From Jim Metrock: Webster County High School is in the small town (pop. 650) of Dixon, Kentucky. The current bell schedule shows 8 minutes devoted to showing the 12-minute Channel One News program to students. This school, along with many others that still technically are showing Channel One, has little...
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From Jim Metrock: Ugh. The Kiddie Marketers at Channel One News can’t help themselves. Now they are sponsoring a “sweepstakes” for young people. “Sweepstakes” is a gambling term originally used in horse racing, then used in lotteries, and then used by marketing firms. Channel One wants to get kids to buy tickets...
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From Jim Metrock: The newest member of Channel One’s team of “reporters” is Tom Hanson. His background looks rock solid. His credentials are easily the most impressive of Channel One’s current crew. However Mr. Hanson is different than other Channel One on-air personalities. He appears to be doing his career in reverse. It’s too...
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From Jim Metrock: You would think Time Warner wouldn’t need to rip off American taxpayers. After all Time Warner had a net income in 2012 of a little over $3 billion. That’s not revenue, that’s income… net. The Cartoon Network is part of Time Warner. Stuart Snyder is the president of Cartoon Network....
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From Jim Metrock: This is getting painful, even for me. Jessica Kumari is around the age of my sons and I hate to see someone damaging their career at such a young age by doing something that is utterly moronic. Ms. Kumari, why are you doing Nintendo ads on Channel One? It might...
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From Jim Metrock: When a movie studio comes to Channel One wanting C1’s help getting kids to buy tickets to their movie, Channel One News goes into overdrive. Channel One will do whatever it takes to make that movie studio happy. (What about what’s best for students? You gotta be kiddin’. This is Channel...
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From Jim Metrock: Well she showed up. I was wondering what happened to Jessica Kumari after she left Channel One News this past May, After working at Channel One for an unbelievable stretch of six years! I was interested to see at what her next job would be. On September 18 I found out...
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