Does your school still have Channel One News?
Learn how to unplug
Houghton Mifflin/Channel One News
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.
One hyperlink tells a lot about Channel One’s decline.
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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Complete, unedited Channel One News for March 4, 2013
Jim Metrock: Jason Kuang is one of several relatively new faces to pop up on Channel One News. This sometimes means that more veteran on-air personalities have informed the company they are leaving at the end of the school year or sooner. Mr. Kuang was on the show today. He probably enjoyed the fact...
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Complete, unedited Channel One News for March 1, 2013
From Jim Metrock: You can tell how healthy Channel One News is simply by counting the number of full-paying, regular advertisers who have bought spots on the classroom TV show. When you see a public service announcement, that means Channel One had no regular advertiser for that spot. Some organizations may...
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Your TV set is turning on by itself.
From Jim Metrock: Teachers don’t like Channel One News. Not all teachers of course. There are some that like the hour-a-week break Channel One provides from dealing with students. Some teachers like this electronic babysitter. “Be quiet and watch your TV,” you can hear a lazy teacher tell students. But lazy teachers are a...
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