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.
Screen shot from Channel One News on March 28, 2013 Middle schools are shown the same content as high schools. Teachers are given no warning of controversial stories on Channel One News so parents cannot talk with their children about what they are going to see on Channel One.
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Kathy Goodman the longest serving employee at Channel One News has been quietly removed from the company. She has been gone for exactly one year. The public was unaware of her departure because like Channel One’s ouster of Dr. Paul Folkemer , there was no press release, no public statement of thanks for her...
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From Jim Metrock: May no educator ever, EVER, do what this man did with his Doctor of Education (Ed.D) degree. Educator-turned-kiddie-marketer Dr. Paul Folkemer is out at Channel One News. He first joined Channel One in 1998. He left after four years and then came back to the youth marketing firm in 2008. Now...
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Longtime Channel One employee Mohamed Sayed is no longer employed by the company. Mr. Sayed was promoted less than three years ago to the position of Chief Financial Officer. His replacement, if there is one, is unknown.
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From Jim Metrock: Once upon a time Channel One News signed up schools by offering to install a modest TV network connecting classrooms, if schools showed their daily, 12-minute, news/marketing TV program. The link on today’s Channel One’s home page indicates that Channel One is no longer in the business of loaning TV sets...
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