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: It angers me when Channel One uses young people to perform in a promotional piece like this. These young middle school students wouldn’t be so cheery shouting out “Channel One News starts right now!” if they understood the toll Channel One has taken on their education. These students lose up to...
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From Jim Metrock: Channel One News regularly plays music from rock and rap bands during their classroom TV show. They shouldn’t. Helping to interest schoolchildren in new rock, pop and rap artists is not the stated purpose of Channel One News. Channel One got into schools (disproportionately into schools in lower-income communities) by promising...
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From Jim Metrock: The people that make decisions at Channel One News thought that teens, preteens, and even elementary school-age children needed to know about this celebrity/drug story. The headline for the story appeared on Channelone.com’s home page on May 24. Who’s to blame: Channelone.com managing editor Karen Knapstein and current CEO Ms. CJ...
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A 2-minute long commercial?! Channel One violates contract again.
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Channel One’s press release: Channel One News Appoints CJ Kettler as Chief Executive Officer Kettler to Spearhead Transformative Initiatives for Channel One News NEW YORK, May 20, 2013 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — Channel One, LLC, the educational digital content provider and producer of Channel One News, the award-winning news program for young people, today...
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From Jim Metrock: Summer is the time for schools to dump Channel One. During the summer months, when fewer students are in the building, it is so much easier to remove Channel One’s antiquated “technology” (read: old, analog TV sets) from classrooms . After last summer Channel One quietly posted on their website that their...
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From August 2011… From Jim Metrock: Longtime Channel One on-air personality Jessica Kumari has called it quits. Obligation was surprised in August 2011 when Ms. Kumari came back for yet another year. When she came back for a sixth year in 2012, I thought she must have given up on wanting a...
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Enough violence, Channel One. Stop being reckless with your young, captive audience.
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Guns are drawn during Channel One’s weekly Week in Rap segment. Teachers have no idea what images Channel One will thrust on schoolchildren.
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From Jim Metrock: There was no press release announcing her hiring. All previous CEOs benefited from a substantial public relations effort when hired. Ms. Kettler got nothing. Strange. It might have been Ms. Kettler who insisted on no publicity. I could understand that. Odd that Obligation, Inc. was the entity that told the...
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