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.
Channel One’s new Sweepstakes
Channel One News is back to their “kiddie marketing” tricks. They have announced a new contest. The impression is they are giving away tons of stuff to get kids to enter. They don’t call it a “contest” but rather a “sweepstakes”! Wow. This “sweepstakes” is all about wringing personally identifiable information (PII) from young people....
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Channel One News Hall of Shame: Hungry Tweens (1999)
This full page ran in Advertising Age in 1999. Channel One was soliciting new junk food advertisers to add to their already considerable stable of junk food clients. For years Channel One News advertised M&Ms, Snickers, Skittles, Twix, Nestle Crunch bars, Hostess Cupcakes, Lays Potato Chips, Doritos, Pepsi,...
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Fabian leaves.
From Jim Metrock: Channel One’s on-air personality Steven Fabian bid farewell to students in a YouTube video today. He did not say where he was going or if he had another job. In his remarks he thanks everyone for watching him and Channel One News. He knows full well that students are under...
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