Click here to view the embedded video.

From Jim Metrock:

You’re about to see and read some disgusting stuff. Especially when you consider this material is aimed at teens, preteens, and very possibly elementary school-age children.

Welcome to Channel One News’s sister company gURL.com. Channel One News is now urging children of all ages to not only visit this sexually charged site, but incredibly to enter into a “convo” (conversation) on gURL’s vulgar message boards. Let’s take this a step a time.

Let’s look at the gURL.com site. Below is a screen shot from their home page. What do we learn from this page?

• This is a site aimed at girls, not women. The name says that.
• This site looks like it is fixated on sex.
• There is an ad for a web show called Talent “presented by AlloyTV” just like the ads we see on channelone.com. That’s not a coincidence. Both controversial companies are owned by Alloy Media and Marketing.
• To the right there’s a contest to win $100 by entering a conversation with strangers on the Internet.

 Let’s see some more content from gURL.com.  Here is a series of four gURL articles. Other articles are equally sexual in nature or worse.

Children who are forced to watch Channel One News during their school day hear at least twice during the daily show, “Go to Channelone.com for more on this story.” “You can find a lot of neat things on our website Channelone.com.” When children visit Channelone.com they are urged to join Channel One’s FaceBook page and to follow Channel One on Tweeter. This article is about the age-inappropriateness of gURL.com because of tweets like these below.

Channel One is always encouraging children of any age to connect with them through social media.

Note: Both of the links in Channel One's retweets go to the same page - the gURL relationship message board with extreme sexual discussions.

Below: Here is one of the contest Channel One News wants children to enter at their sister company’s site. Where was Dr. Paul Folkemer the self-described, in-house “child advocate” at Channel One? Did this meet his approval?

What about the anchors who are the face of Channel One News?  Does Jessica Kumari think nothing about pushing this “hook up” mentality on children? What about Shelby Holliday? Scott Evans? Did one of them write these tweets to kids? There will never be answers coming from Channel One.

Below is a sample of a “relationship” message board on gURL.com:

The purpose of the Channel One tweets is to convert young fans on Channel One’s official website to fans of gURL.com.  That’s disgusting. Now consider that Channel One News and their new partner the white board company Promethean Ltd. are making a major effort to introduce Channel One  to elementary schoolchildren in grades 5, 4, and ugh 3. This should make one physically sick. Channel One News is bad enough with its hyper-commercial in-school TV show and website, but now that Channel One is pushing gURL.com into the face of kids it is significantly worse.

Promethean and Channel One News: Lighting the flame of controversy in elementary schools.

Above is a screen shot of today’s Channelone.com. A commercial that was shown on the in-school Channel One News is playing advertising a new Nickelodeon TV series called How To Rock. To the right and throughout the hyper-commercial website is an ad for the show.

Teachers and principals are allowing this complete waste of time to happen on taxpayer-funded school time.  Nickelodeon and other TV networks and movie studios love students who are forced to watch Channel One “News.” Being able to pound commercials into the heads of a captive audience of schoolchildren is unbelievably profitable for advertisers.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Channel One's message to kids is: You're ugly. You stink. You don't wear the right clothes. And you're not cool enough. Fortunately you can solve all these personal problems if you buy our advertised products.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Channel One executives once again make a joke of their “news” show by selling a whole “non-commercial” segment of their program to the Cartoon Network to promote their new TV show called Level Up. Selling their Pop Quiz to advertisers is nothing new for Channel One. This is a deceptive practice because the ad doesn’t appear in the regular form of a commercial and it violates Channel One’s contractual promise to limit daily advertising to no more than two minutes.

Channel One News

January 23, 2012 

SCRIPT

{LEVEL UP CAST }

HEY EVERYONE – WE’RE THE CAST FROM THE NEW SHOW LEVEL UP. AND I’VE GOT AN AWESOME POP QUIZ FOR YOU COMING UP. CHANNEL ONE NEWS STARTS RIGHT NOW

{SCOTT}

THANKS GUYS FOR STARTING OFF THE SHOW! I’M SCOTT EVANS, LET’S CHECK IN WITH SHARON SONG FOR A LOOK AT TODAYS BIGGEST STORIES. WHAT’S UP SHARON?

…

COMING UP I SEE SOME INTERESTING CHARACTERS AND A POP QUIZ IN YOUR FUTURE. STICK AROUND.

HEY GUYS TODAY WE’VE GOT THE CAST OF LEVEL UP, WHO WANTS TO TEST YOUR KNOWLEDGE OF ONE THE SMARTEST GUYS WHO EVER LIVED.

[STORY SUBJECT TO CHANGE]

{LEVEL UP CAST}

IN OUR NEW SHOW LEVEL UP – WE ACCIDENTALLY OPEN A WORMHOLE OR PORTAL FROM THIS WORLD TO A VIDEO GAME.

NOW SOME SCIENTISTS THINK WORMHOLES MIGHT BE REAL AND COULD EXIST ACCORDING TO THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY.

YOUR QUESTION IS:

WHO CAME UP WITH THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY:

WAS IT

A ISAAC NEWTON

B CHARLES DARWIN

C STEPHEN HAWKING

D ALBERT EINSTEIN

TAKE 10 SECONDS

OK TIMES UP THE ANSWER IS D ALBERT EINSTEIN. NOW CHANNEL ONE HAS THE REST OF THE FACTS.

THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY IN THE SIMPLEST TERMS SAYS THAT TIME AND SPACE ARE NOT ABSOLUTE – THEY ARE RELATIVE. MEANING THAT TIME AND SPACE CAN CHANGE DEPENDING ON YOUR FRAME OF REFERENCE.

FOR EXAMPLE. YOU MIGHT BE STANDING STILL.RELATIVE TO THE EARTH. BUT IF YOU LOOK AT YOURSELF “RELATIVE” TO THE SOLAR SYSTEM, YOU’RE ACTUALLY MOVING BECAUSE THE EARTH IS MOVING.

THAT’S A PRETTY SIMPLE EXPLANATION FOR WHAT IS REALLY A COMPLEX THEORY. AND THE THEORY OF RELATIVITY

IS BEING USED TO EXPLAIN THINGS LIKE BLACK HOLES, WORMHOLES, AND YES EVEN THE POSSIBILITY OF TIME TRAVEL.

{SCOTT}

THANKS GUYS, YOU PROBABLY ACED THAT POP QUIZ! TO TEST YOUR SKILLS IN MORE POP QUIZZES – BE SURE TO CHECK OUT OUR POP QUIZ PAGE OVER ON CHANNEL ONE DOT COM.

IT’S A GREAT START TO A MONDAY. WELL GUYS THAT DOES IT FOR US, I’M SCOTT EVANS, MAKE TODAY AWESOME! WE’LL SEE YOU TOMORROW.

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,” said Linn, a psychologist at Harvard University’s Judge Baker Children’s Center. She said Rogers was a “really good example of somebody who conducted a career in television without selling out” to commercialism.

As commercialism in the form of sponsored sports teams, billboards and soda machines creeps into more schools, Linn and some of her colleagues are targeting television programming shown daily to about 8 million students in 12,000 middle, junior and high schools across the country.

Channel One News, first broadcast in 1990, is a 12-minute long news program with up to two minutes of commercials. Participating schools receive the show for free — along with a loaned television for every 23 students, two videocassette recorders, cable equipment and a satellite receiver.

On average, Channel One takes up one week of school time every year – with the equivalent of one full day devoted solely to ads.

” Channel One depends critically upon stealth,” said Gary Ruskin, director of Commercial Alert, a consumer-advocacy group he founded with Ralph Nader. “If parents really knew what Channel One was selling to their kids, they would expel it from the schools immediately.

” At a time when so many schools are failing their kids, it’s a shame and a scandal to waste so much school time on ads.”

Critics argue that Channel One misuses compulsory attendance laws to force children to watch commercials. They claim it wastes school time, promotes violence, wastes tax dollars, promotes wrong values to children, may harm children’s health, corrupts the integrity of public education and promotes television instead of reading.

Channel One management insists the show is not really controversial.

” The controversy exists in a very small realm of professional culture critics,” said Jeff Ballabon, vice president of public policy for Primedia, Channel One’s parent company.

Ruskin disagrees, noting that individuals such as movie star Matt Damon, groups as large as the United Methodist Church, and others “across the political spectrum — right, left and everyone in between” oppose Channel One.

Ken McNatt, a 2003 graduate of Cranberry High School in Venango County, is president of the Students Against Commercialized Classrooms Organization.

” I plan on keeping up with (fighting Channel One) until the program is gone,” said McNatt, who will be a secondary education major at Clarion University this fall. “Eventually, I would like to see a national movement against this.”

Although McNatt did not get Channel One removed from his home district, others have waged successful battles.

Ruskin said the program has been removed from schools in Nashville, Tenn., and was banned in New York by the state Board of Regents. It will be removed from Seattle public schools in the 2004-05 school year.

In April, an Oregon father sued the Salem-Keizer School District for its contract with Channel One. Gary Boyes contends the district is violating the Oregon State Constitution by forcing his son and daughter to watch advertisements in school.

But Ballabon said advertisements are a necessity of a free media.

” We believe our news should be independent,” he said, adding that Primedia declined the government’s offer to pay for Channel One because the show should not be the “government ministry of information.” [Obligation note: Channel One News is a quasi-Federal government entity. It is the closest thing the U.S. has to government sponsored news. The largest source of ad money is from the Federal government. If the Feds stopped their flow of money to Channel One, the company would go bankrupt within months. What Ballabon says here is utter nonsense.]

He said Channel One is the “least commercial way” for news to enter a classroom. Newspapers contain 60 percent to 70 percent advertisements, he said, while only 1 percent of Channel One’s programming is advertisements. [Obligation note: Ballabon must be lumping Channel One News and the Classroom Channel content to come up with this "1%" figure. He is being purposely misleading. Channel One News is the MOST commercial way for news to enter a classroom.]

Ballabon said the group streams two hours’ worth of educational videos and news with up to two minutes of commercials daily, about half of which are not for goods or services.  Still, Ruskin contends that Channel One is “the foremost tool for commercializing the schools in the United States.” [Obligation note: Ballabon is misstating the amount of commercial content on Channel One News. There often is up to four minutes of advertising content on a daily show. He is not counting the "Cingular Question of the Day" or "Gatorade Play of the Week" or other sponsored segments of the show as advertising content.]

” With newspapers, you can just look at the text,” he said. “… With Channel One, kids are forced to watch the ads. … An old CEO admitted that and bragged to advertisers.”  In 1994, Joel Babbit, then president of Channel One, said, “The biggest selling point to advertisers (is) … we are forcing kids to watch two minutes of commercials.”

Contractually, schools utilizing Channel One must show 90 percent of the news shows streamed, complete with commercials, according to an online contract at Channel One’s Web site.

” The reason (students) watch it is because it’s so good,” Ballabon said, adding that students aren’t forced to watch anything. [Obligation note: Ballabon's big lie. The contract calls for the showing of the program 90% of school days in 80% of all classrooms. There is compelled viewing. Those eyeballs watching the ads pay Ballabon's inflated salary.]

Kelly Busato, 15, who attends Jeannette High School, and her 20-year-old sister, Susan Busato, a Jeannette graduate, both like Channel One.

” It’s like I get updated on that stuff (news) because I don’t sit and watch that stuff at home,” Kelly Busato said. She added that she likes the commercials — including those for “not smoking weed,” face washes, movies and Web sites.

” It’s a fun way to watch the news,” she said. “… It like puts it in terms you understand.”  Susan Busato agreed. “I don’t see that there’s anything wrong with it — not at all. It keeps you updated.”

Steven Saunders, 15, who will be a freshman at Hempfield Area High School, said he believes Channel One is “definitely” a waste of time. ” There’s a lot of commercials,” he said.

His brother, Ross Saunders, also 15, had a slightly different view.  ” I’d probably watch it anyway,” he said, adding that it gives him a better understanding of the world.

Ross Saunders said one advertisement did influence him. After seeing a commercial for About.com, another company owned by Primedia, he visited the Web site while doing research for a school paper.

Primedia’s ownership of About.com has stirred controversy with some, including Consumer Alert and Obligation Inc., because within two clicks of arriving at the site Internet users can find themselves at a pornography site.

” I think it is totally in line with their corporate mind-set. This company has a major values problems,” Ruskin charged.

Channel One has a strict policy of what will not be advertised ,including abortion clinics, alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, contraceptive and feminine hygiene products, firearms, drug-related paraphernalia or R-, NC-17- or X-rated movies. It also does not accept political advertising. [Obligation note: This "strict policy" is laughable. Mr. Ballabon wants people to applaud him for not advertising hand guns to kids? or to praise his company for not accepting abortion clinic ad money?]

” (Not only) do we carefully vet the products and services, but we carefully vet the creative content of the ads,” Ballabon said, explaining that an independent panel — including parents, teachers and clergy — examine commercials destined for air and “have the total right to say no and veto the commercial.” [Obligation note: There is no panel. Every effort has been made to obtain information about this "panel" and Channel One refuses to disclose any information about them. It appears to be nothing but a public relations sham.]

” If that board exists, they are dumb as a stump,” Ruskin said. “How could you let in ads for ‘Supernova’ and ‘The Mummy’ … when violence is such a major issue in schools across the country?”

” Supernova” is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association of America for sci-fi action violence and sensuality/nudity. “The Mummy” is rated PG-13 for pervasive adventure violence and some partial nudity.

” It is amazing that … 8 million American children were compelled to watch advertising for a druggie movie in schools,” Ruskin added, citing a commercial for “Dude, Where’s My Car?,” a movie rated PG-13 for language and some sexual and drug-related humor. The Internet Movie Database describes the movie’s plot as, “two potheads wake up from a night of partying and can’t remember where they parked their car.”

” I don’t think it’s appropriate period to promote movies in a school setting,” McNatt said. “Government buildings such as schools should not be used to pitch products for a corporate interest.”

Primedia will not release a list of advertisers or ad rates. A 1997 analysis of the program by William Hoynes, professor of sociology at Vassar College, along with media-watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy In Reporting, stated that advertisers paid about $200,000 per 30-second spot.

The analysis revealed that although Channel One is much more likely to air in less affluent schools, the program pays very little attention to economic news. Hoynes also found that only 25 percent of air time is devoted to coverage of breaking news stories.

But Ballabon, a former high school teacher, said the critics are off-base.

” (Channel One) is a way of bringing the news to a plane that engages teenagers,” Ballabon, a former high school teacher, said. “… No one covers these issues.”

He cited a story about teenagers with gambling addictions, as well as a comment made by Richard Bonnette, president of the Partnership for a Drug Free America.

” The incontrovertible fact is that because of Channel One, millions of teens are keeping away from drugs,” Bonnette said in 1999. Bonnette’s group found “conclusive evidence” that Channel One students had “significantly” more negative attitudes about drugs and were much more aware of the risks of drugs. [Obligation note: Bonnette does not disclose his conflict of interest. His group makes money by placing PSAs on Channel One.]

Hempfield Area High School student Drew Smith, 16, said he doesn’t remember the movie commercials, but recalls the anti-drug ads.

” The drug commercials — they’re really funny,” he said. Although he admits that he doesn’t pay much attention to the channel, he added, “It’s worth it, I think.” [Obligation note: The same anti-drug PSAs can be obtained by schools free-of-charge without having to use Channel One.]

Abby Graham-Pardus can be reached at apardus@tribweb.com.

“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.”

Imagine you’re a seventh-grader walking to social-studies class. In the hallway, you pass a row of lockers plastered with a giant ad for a supermarket. At lunch in the cafeteria, you sit at a table adorned with characters from an upcoming kids’ movie. You ride home on a school bus emblazoned with an ad for a bank and hand your parents a permission slip, for a field trip, that includes an unrelated promo for a department store.

Children and their parents—two of America’s most valuable demographics—are used to seeing ads during cartoons, on cereal boxes and, more recently, on kid-size water bottles. But parents can always turn off the tube or buy less advertising-laden brands. They can’t, however, do much about the ads their kids are exposed to on school grounds. And that’s exactly what draws some advertisers. A Los Angeles—based firm at one point distributed marketing materials touting a “unique form of advertising” in elementary schools, one that “caters to a captive audience where the viewer can’t ‘change the channel’ or ‘turn the page.’”

Educators don’t relish force-feeding brands to kids. But as budget shortfalls continue, a growing number of school boards and legislators are making more room for advertisers. For example, the public school district in St. Francis, Minn., recently agreed to cover 10% to 15% of its lockers with ads. Installation began Oct. 22. Superintendent Edward Saxton says that so far, he has encountered little push-back from parents. “Most of these parents have experienced four years of flat funding,” he says. “They don’t like to see programs getting cut.”

There’s a lot of appeal in that logic—plant an ad, save an art class—and School Media Inc., the Coon Rapids, Minn., start-up pushing the locker ads, is working on deals with nine other districts in Minnesota, Wisconsin and California. Meanwhile, New Jersey, having cut $812 million from its school budget this year, could soon join the handful of states that have green-lighted school-bus advertising, which earns districts up to $1,000 per bus.

Businesses can sense schools’ increasing desperation. “We see a tremendous opportunity for corporate America to step up and help during this time of extreme crisis,” says Mickey Freeman, CEO of Educational Funding Partners, a Denver start-up that brokers naming and signage deals for FORTUNE 1000 companies for everything from school auditoriums and gymnasiums to libraries, computer labs, cafeterias and any other space school boards deem appropriate.

This is not the first time schools have courted advertising controversy. 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. In 2009 another company, BusRadio, streamed music—as well as four minutes of ads per hour—to more than a million school-bus riders a day in 24 states. The company ceased operations last fall shortly after the FCC raised questions about the age-appropriateness of its music.

Concerns about acceptable content help explain why not every school is handing the keys over to the admen. In September the San Diego Unified School District voted down a proposal to sell ad space on campus and on school websites—another emerging revenue stream. Meanwhile, the Sweetwater Union High School District, just outside San Diego, recently rejected its first potential advertiser, a local for-profit college. The rationale, says school-board president Arlie Ricasa, centered on the low graduation and high loan-default rates at for-profit institutions. “It didn’t make logical sense to me to promote a system where debt was going to be incurred by students,” she says.

“It’s a slippery slope,” Susan Linn, director of the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, says of determining which ads are permissible in schools. “It’s really better to draw the line at none, because schools are going to be constantly weighing the impact.”

But in an era of tough budget cuts, advertising is easy money. And as resistance wanes, PTAs, administrators, politicians and business owners have started to wonder: Where else can schools slap an advertisement to help make ends meet? In Massachusetts, which cut state education aid by $115.6 million in its fiscal-2011 budget, the Peabody school district in September approved selling advertising on permission slips and other notices that go home to parents. In Hull, Mass., administrators are considering selling ad space on the roof of the high school, over which dozens of planes fly each day in their descent to Logan International Airport, about 10 miles (16 km) away. Students wouldn’t even see the ads. How’s that for an upside?

This article originally appeared in the November 8, 2010 issue of TIME.

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2028060,00.html#ixzz1kCapzwrB