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.
By Abby Graham-Pardus TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, August 10, 2003 Susan Linn knows children’s television. She began her career in children’s entertainment, where her work included several appearances with her puppets working on “Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood” with the late Fred Rogers. ” I’ve always had a really strong interest to use media to promote the health and well-being of children,”...
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“Channel One News, an in-school TV network launched in 1990 and used in about 8,000 U.S. middle and high schools, has long been a target of criticism because its 12-minute broadcasts include ads. A study published in 2006 in Pediatrics found that on average, students remember more ads from the broadcasts than news stories.”...
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No, they really do. Archbishop Chapelle HS Bourgeois HS Cope MS Downsville HS Eunice JHS Hanson Memorial HS Lutcher HS St. Paul’s School Vidalia JHS Welsh SJ MS Youree Drive MS Zwolle HS
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No, they really do. Avon MS North Boston MS Brown Intermediate Center Brownstown Central Middle School Carroll MS Central Noble HS Covington HS Custer Baker Intermediate DeKalb MS Doe Creek MS Driver MS Grimmer MS Jasper MS Justice Intermediate School Kesling MS Kouts MS & HS Maple Ridge Elementary New Prairie MS Noblesville...
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“Channel One’s then-president bragged to a youth marketing conference in 1994, ‘The biggest selling point to advertisers … we are forcing kids to watch two minutes of commercials… . The advertiser gets a group of kids who cannot go to the bathroom, who cannot change the station, who cannot listen to their mother yell in the background,...
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We have a winner! Four Wastin’ School Time and Tax Dollars awards will be given out each school year by Obligation. The first winner is Lardner Middle School in the Niles Community School District in Niles, Michigan. Lardner beat out several other schools. Other schools nominated for the first award were: Avon Middle School...
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When Channel One News wants to sell a young person something (which is the main reason the company exists), they don’t fool around. For weeks Channel One has been pounding students in their classrooms and visitors to their website (channelone.com) with ads for the Samsung Focus smart phone. Above one sees a Samsung...
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From Jim Metrock: We have redesigned Obligation.org to make it easier to find articles, videos and PDFs. This time of year is when schools begin talking about ending their contracts with Channel One. School boards often vote in the spring time to remove the program over the upcoming summer months. Making our website more...
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