On April 14, students at schools that still have Channel One News were forced to sit and waste four minutes of their school day watching a story about a young motocross rider. Motocross? During school time? The story may be inspirational to some, but this had nothing to do with any school’s curriculum. This...
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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.
4 Minutes Of Motocross
10-K Spells Out Ugliness Of Channel One
From Alloy’s annual 10-K report published April 12, 2010: We believe our business should continue to grow as we strive to capitalize on the following key assets: � Broad Access. We are able to reach a significant portion of targeted consumers by: (i) producing a wide range of college guides, books and recruitment publications;...
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Schools Have No Control Over Channel One’s Content
This video is from years ago (1997). It was the first drug story Obligation was able to tape from the Channel One TV show. Whenever we showed this to parents at PTA and PTO meetings the response was the same: outrage. Since that time, Channel One News has aired dozens of PSAs, news stories,...
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What A Waste
This video is from the December 1, 2009 Channel One News program. Channel One News is suppose to be about news, current events. That was the promise made to schools. Channel One however can’t afford to report much news. Instead they fill their “news” program with “filler” stories like this one. Nothing in this...
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Looking back: A Channel One commercial for Twinkies.
This commercial is from a January 2001 Channel One News program. Although currently Channel One does not air junk food commercials, there is always the fear that these kiddie marketers may bring them back to American classrooms. That would seem to be impossible with the present concern about youth obesity, but Channel One executives...
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Gay and Lesbian Stories Expand On Channel One’s Kids’ Site
Alloy’s Channel One News can’t get enough of the lesbian prom story from Mississippi. This story is not only questionable for an audience that includes elementary school-age children but it is also pretty one-sided. A piece of Channel One News sales literature in 2000 stated that the company wanted to “mold” the views of...
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Does Channel One Rob Students Of Educational Time?
On Channel One’s Facebook page they asked what students thought about their weekly Friday segment called “This Week in Rap.” This is a feature where a rap group attempts to quickly touch on news events of the past week in a rap song. The result is often funny because the production quality is so...
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Lesbian Prom Story Get High Profile On Channel One News
This article was on the front page of Channel One News’ website (March 12, 2010) which has visitors from high school-age to elementary school-age. Channel One News has been passionate in its efforts to expose children to stories about the gay lifestyle, gay marriage, trials concerning gay issues, and student protests about gay...
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Skiing Presented By Secret
This is a screen grab from an article on Channel One’s website today. The Winter Olympics are currently going on and this type of article is typical of how Channel One News mixes news with ads so as to confuse young readers. In Channel One’s world there is no problem having an advertiser sponsor...
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