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: Nobody can fault former Channel One anchor Julian Dujarric from removing any mention of having worked for the youth marketing company Channel One from his Facebook page. I think once people leave Channel One News they begin to more fully understand Channel One’s commercial exploitation of schoolchildren and I think, or...
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From Jim Metrock: Channel One’s new Privacy Policy appears to be more controversial than it’s previous version. Privacy concerns will be a major problem for Channel One and its fellow Alloy kiddie marketers. Ms. C.J. Kettler the new Channel One CEO may think she can continue to collect information on other people’s children,...
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From Jim Metrock: When or if you try to read Channel One’s brand spankin’ new Website Terms of Use below, keep in mind who Channel One wrote the words for: teenagers, preteens, and elementary school-age children. That’s right, young people and very young people. Websites like Channelone.com create such documents to...
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From Jim Metrock: On June 15, 2013, in an article about Channel One’s new CEO Ms. C.J. Kettler’s less than stellar business background, I mentioned that I thought Kent Haehl’s new position at the company – simply listed as “CRO” on Haehl’s Linkedin public profile – stood for Chief Risk Officer. That was...
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July 8, 2013 – Channelone.com “breaking news” article. From Jim Metrock: For months Channel One News would post AP news stories without attribution. They made other people’s content appear to be their own. It was dumb for them to do that because they knew they would caught. Above is an AP story on Channelone.com today...
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From Jim Metrock: February 2013 was when Channel One very secretly removed Kent Haehl as CEO. Ms. C.J. Kettler took over this position without any public announcement. In April, Obligation broke the story of Haehl’s departure and Kettler’s hiring. One month later Channel One’s PR department put out a press release stating the obvious....
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From Jim Metrock: This is one of my favorite articles. I clipped it out of Advertising Age magazine way back in 1996. Heidi Diamond was just hired by Channel One News to help take the kiddie marketing company to new heights. In 1996, Channel One was making so much money it was obscene....
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At one time: Eight reporters. From Jim Metrock: Channel One News is losing their on-air personalities almost as quickly as they are losing their audience. Julian Dujarric lasted less than a year at the Channel One youth marketing company. I’m hoping he realized that commercially exploiting a captive audience of schoolchildren was not...
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