May 23, 2012 – The day Channel One News tore up its contract with American schools.

May 30, 2012

 

Entire show is a commercial for Disney/ABC.

Promise of 2-minute limit on daily advertising abandoned.

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Watch this video to understand why Channel One News has lost over 1/3 of their school contracts since 2003.

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Taxpayers across the country helped to subsidize the promotion of four Disney/ABC TV shows on Channel One News.

Students in the audience were told to wave signs promoting the TV shows. Contestants were placed on teams named after the TV shows so the name of the programs could be said over and over – pounding the shows into the minds of the captive audience forced to watch this long, poorly disguised commercial.

What was the purpose of this May 23, 2012 Channel One News show? To educate? or to make sure teens and preteens knew what TV shows they should watch this summer?

Channel One is and always has been a youth marketing firm. The president of their company has always been an ad or marketing executive. No educator or journalist has ever run the company.

Channel One’s contract with schools expressly limits Channel One to airing no more than two minutes of advertising during its daily, 12-minute show. Channel One News routinely violates this clause of the contract (that Channel One wrote!), but this program indicates Channel One considers its own contract a sham contract. There are no restrictions on what Channel One does. If they want to use the entire show to promote Disney/ABC, they will do it because they can.

Few school administrators are monitoring Channel One’s programming. If they did, they would be appalled. This one show, May 23, 2012, should make it easier for many more schools to drop Channel One. Channel One News is making it difficult for any educator to defend the program.