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: 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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Channel One News routinely violates their contract with schools.
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An example of how Channel One News has changed into a hyper-commercial, irrelevant mess.
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Channel One News prevents parents from seeing the commercials they send to American classrooms. They remove commercials from their playback for parents on Channelone.com. Obligation provides parents and the public with the full Channel One shows that students were forced to watch while they sit at their desks.
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Junk food advertising on Channel One News.
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Channel One News advertises Snickers and video games to middle school students. This type of advertising caused Channel One to lose thousands of schools.
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From Jim Metrock: About.com had a large “adult” pornographic section when Channel One’s parent company (at the time) Primedia bought the website in late 2000. Because of an Obligation press release the New York Post wrote about Primedia and their plan to own About.com and their porn content. I knew that Channel One News would be pitching...
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“It’s hard to express how unconcerned we are that this is going to impact us negatively.” April 15, 2000 – Channel One’s Jeff Ballabon quoted in the Harrisburg, PA Patriot-News, referring to the efforts of conservative and liberal groups and scholars to oppose Channel One News. Things started going down hill for Channel One in the...
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Strange ad to be airing in middle schools.
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