Channel One in a Nutshell

Channel One is the name of both a marketing company in New York City and the TV show they produce in Hollywood, CA. (The New York State Board of Regents has never allowed Channel One in any public school in their state.)

Channel One was created by Whittle Communications in 1989. It's main purpose was to place commercial messages in classrooms. The company is now owned by Kohlberg Kravis and Roberts, who own it through an investment arm called Primedia.

The Channel One deal is this: School boards would be loaned a TV network for each 6-12th grade schools if the board agreed to show the 12-13-minute in-school TV show called "Channel One News" at least 90% of all school days in, at least, 80% of all classrooms and when they did show the program the school agreed to show the program in its entirety.

In Alabama, this equates to 31 hours of school time turned over to this company - or one instructional week of school each year.

Each school is loaned a satellite dish (that can only pick up Channel One's signals), two VCRs, and a 19" TV set for each room. They receive, via satellite the daily "news" show and also can receive several hours of documentaries that contain no commercials. This is called the Classroom Channel.

The TV show starts out with a piece of art that a student has sent in. Each artwork must contain the Channel One logo somewhere in the picture.(This makes children into unpaid graphic artists for Channel One's advertising department.) Then several one sentence headlines are flashed on the screen. Then a quote for the day, usually tied into a story on the show. The anchors introduce themselves. Then a MTV-styled introductory segment with music and graphics. The top story is read. Maybe another one and then the first batch of commercials, usually one minute and either two or three commercials. Another story, not necessarily hard news, but a teen feature. One minute of commercials followed by a "Pop Quiz" that may have nothing to do with the stories reported on. The anchors sign off and the program appears to come to an end, but usually one or two more commercials are featured after the "end" of the show. Total time is usually 13 minutes.

School boards have to sign a contract before they receive Channel One. The contract is for three years and renews automatically. Schools can end the contract at any time without any extra penalty being incurred.

Most educational organizations have expressed opposition to the presence of TV commercials in a classroom. You can visit our web site and read resolutions opposing the concept and opposing specifically Channel One.

When a commercial is shown to students under force of contract, the school becomes an endorser of the product being advertised. That is unethical.

Public schools are government schools. When a public school requires children to watch a commercial, then the government is telling children what products they should be purchasing or what movies they should watch. This is not a legitimate role of government.
Channel One takes up one hour a week. The content of this hour is not controlled by the local community. Indeed, the community, through their school board, had to agree to limit the number of times they could not show the program.

Channel One is content that is shown to eleven-year-olds and to eighteen-year-olds. No content can be age-appropriate for such a range of ages.

There is an alternative to Channel One called CNN Newsroom. It is geared to teens. It is free as opposed to Channel One's very expensive demand for school time. CNN is a world-class news gathering organization and Channel One isn't. CNN does not loan equipment and Channel One does. Reading a paper is much more educational than even CNN Newsroom.

Channel One relentlessly pushes junk food. A Channel One "diet" would include Snickers, Fruit Loops, Twik bars, M&Ms all varieties, Snapple, Pepsi, Mt. Dew, Skittles, Mug Root Beer, and Three Musketeers.

Channel One advertises movies. They will advertise violent and sexually provocative movies to children on the in-school TV show.

Many of the Channel One ads are unique to Channel One. Many feature contests that entice children with the chance to win up to $2 million. All Channel One ads are unique in another way - they are all taxpayer-subsidized commercials.

Channel One's web site, channelone.com, actually put children in danger. This site was heavily promoted to children during school. Once they got there, they found reviews of R-rated movies and sexually-explicit CDs, opportunities to post their picture on the Internet, a "Personal Ads" section that allowed children to exchange personal information with anonymous Internet users, and a chat room that was poorly monitored.

The web site was cleaned up after Sen. Richard Shelby of Alabama called for new U.S. Senate hearings on Channel One in April 1998.

Channel One exists for the ads. The news is what they wrap around the ads to make it "acceptable". Even if Channel One was of educational value, no community would want it in their schools because it costs too much.

The only reason Channel One exists in schools is because it has been invisible and out of the public view and discussion.