What a waste of taxpayer money. Do students need a pop quiz on Muddy Waters (great artist that he was) from Joe Bonamassa (over-rated artist that he is)? The answer is a resounding “No.” This is filler material that Channel One News uses to pad its program. Bonamassa has signed on with Channel One...
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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.
Pop Quiz
Kids urged to “open happiness” by drinking Classic Coke
Channel One News is back in the business of advertising junk drinks. Over the past month Channel One’s official website channelone.com has put an ad from the Coca-Cola company in its rotation of banner ads. Clicking on this banner takes kids directly to the Coke site shown below. There is no warning to children...
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Put down your books, Channel One News wants to sell you a video game.
This commercial ran in the 2009/10 school year. How can a student not watch this commercial? When you see this 30-second commercial, think of six million students watching it at various schools on the same day. That is a tremendous loss of school time. This nonsense goes on every school day, mainly in schools...
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Channel One News has lost 11 schools each week for the last 364 weeks.
It is breathtaking to see the collapse of the Channel One kiddie marketing empire. In 2003 Channel One claimed to have “over 8 million” schoolchildren under contract to their company. Seven years later, Channel One claims they have “nearly 6 million” in its captive audience. That means the figure is 5 million something....
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Channel One’s idea of a “Summer Update”
Boys and girls, it’s time for your Summer Update! From Jim Metrock: Channel One News often defends their company by saying they are the only source of news for many young people. If Channel One went away, then these poor, helpless children would be in the dark about current events. Obligation has had great...
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Grand Theft Auto owner wants Channel One News
If Alloy Media and Marketing the current parent company of Channel One News left a bad taste in the mouths of parents and educators, wait until ZelnickMedia completes their planned purchase of Alloy this fall. ZelnickMedia is an investor group that owns Take-Two Interactive which in turn owns Rockstar Games which created the Grand...
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Liam, that’s the reason students like Channel One News.
From Channel One’s Facebook page. Other children have posted their thanks to Channel One for wasting school time.
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Channel One’s Classic Sales Tape (1997)
Some of the advertisers have changed, but Channel One’s attitude towards kids has not. Schoolchildren are a source of money to Channel One’s executives. Whatever they want to advertise to kids is OK. They will tell parents that kids don’t pay attention to the commercials, but as you hear, they brag about their impact...
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Tampon Advertising Breaks New Ground on Channel One’s Web Site
From Jim Metrock: Channel One News has always been considered a joke by the vast majority of American educators. (“You want a school to give up one hour of school time EACH WEEK so you can show students commercials? In exchange for the rental use of an outdated TV network??”) But one of the...
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