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 Obligation’s Jim Metrock: Alloy’s Matt Diamond loves to push the envelope with teens and preteens. Teen sex and teen drinking are frequently normalized and glamorized in the content he churns out. Evidently some teens and younger children love his stuff. Consequences? For kids? Well, that’s not a big concern evidently for the...
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Channel One News is now advertising the new movie Chronicle in middle schools and high schools. Channel One executives Kent Haehl CEO and Dr. Paul Folkemer VP gave the green light to this ad campaign even thought he movie is rated PG-13 for its sexual content and teen drinking. From the movie studio publicity...
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From Jim Metrock: You’re about to see and read some disgusting stuff. Especially when you consider this material is aimed at teens, preteens, and very possibly elementary school-age children. Welcome to Channel One News’s sister company gURL.com. Channel One News is now urging children of all ages to not only visit this sexually...
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Above is a screen shot of today’s Channelone.com. A commercial that was shown on the in-school Channel One News is playing advertising a new Nickelodeon TV series called How To Rock. To the right and throughout the hyper-commercial website is an ad for the show. Teachers and principals are allowing this complete waste of...
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Channel One executives once again make a joke of their “news” show by selling a whole “non-commercial” segment of their program to the Cartoon Network to promote their new TV show called Level Up. Selling their Pop Quiz to advertisers is nothing new for Channel One. This is a deceptive practice because the ad...
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