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.
And Promethean thinks partnering with pariah Channel One will help them?
Promethean continues its struggle through first half Interim H1 results reflect continued education sales contraction By Fleur Doidge Interactive education tech vendor Promethean kept up the fight against falling demand from the schools of western Europe and the US but still saw revenue shrink 22.9 per cent for the six months ended 30 June. Interim...
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As advertised on Channel One News: Mountain Dew (October 24, 2000)
Channel One News has contributed mightily to the youth obesity crisis.
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gURL.com STILL being heavily promoted by Channel One News
The official Channel One News website greets elementary school and high school students with a big homepage banner ad for the sexually-charged gURL.com site. Screen shot from July 27, 2012. Children clicking on “Need advice” go to gURL.com where every page has a link to their “Love & Sex” page for girls. Here...
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As advertised on Channel One News: Gatorade – celebrity endorsement Mia Hamm (Feb. 2, 2005)
Channel One News allows celebrity endorsements in its commercials. 10-year-old children required to watch the show may not be fully able to understand celebrities are paid to say good things about a product.
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From the archives: Trend-setting tweens are forced to watch our ads… and they love them! (1999)
ddd “To make your Tween media buy as effective as possible, check out the power of Channel One!”
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Complete, unedited Channel One News for April 6, 1998
Interrupting class time to urge middle school students to drink more Pepsi? Channel One News advertised Pepsi products for over a decade. ;
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When Channel One took TV sets out of Elkview Middle School.
From Jim Metrock: The news article below is from two years ago. It says something important about Elkview Middle School’s commitment to academics, and it also says something very ugly about Channel One News and how their operations department works. Channel One was told not to enter the school and remove anything...
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As advertised on Channel One News: Gophone
Channel One News routinely violates their contract with schools.
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From the archives: The hyper-commercialism of Channel One News (2011)
An example of how Channel One News has changed into a hyper-commercial, irrelevant mess.
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