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.
This article was originally published January 27, 2010. This video is from the late 90′s but it shows what Channel One News is all about. Channel One News is a marketing/advertising company that is trying to pretend to be a news gathering organization. They have always told the public their commercials are of...
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Cell phones and wireless services have been major advertisers on Channel One’s middle and high school TV show.
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Nonprofit urges schools to ban Channel One newscast over onslaught of commercials Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/08/11/nonprofit-group-calls-for-schools-across-country-to-ban-channel-one-newscast/?test=latestnews#ixzz23J2huMLC
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The article below was originally published on October 19, 2001. ____________________________________________________________ Channel One’s Insensitive Recap of 9/11 For Sixth Graders Above, children see the first Trade Tower after the plane hit. From Jim Metrock: On September 18, one week after the terrible attack...
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Video games and game systems are regular products advertised on Channel One News. This ad was shown in advance of Christmas 2006.
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What was Channel One News thinking? A youth obesity crisis was raging in the U.S. in 2003, yet Channel One ran numerous commercials to their captive audience for a new junk food: Lay’s Stax Potato Chips. These stackable chips had MORE calories than regular Lay’s chips. Sept. 19, 2003 – Betcha can’t eat...
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Excerpt from Children and Consumer Culture in American Society: A Historical Handbook and Guide (2007)
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BIRMINGHAM, Alabama — A Boston-based nonprofit group is asking Alabama school Superintendent Tommy Bice to suspend the use of Channel One programming in Alabama schools, reopening a debate over whether the 12-minute broadcast aimed at teens is appropriate. The group, Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, asserts that the Channel One television news program —...
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Schools expel Channel One; new policy also limits ads, logos Thursday, November 22, 2001 By Keith Ervin Seattle Times staff reporter Disavowing its earlier flirtation with corporations catering to young consumers, the Seattle School Board voted yesterday to kick Channel One out of the schools and tone down the advertising on Coca-Cola vending machines. Although...
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