Richard Shelby (R-AL) sent a
"Dear Colleague" letter to each U.S. senator asking
for new hearings on Channel One and other commercial programs
in public schools.
"Parents entrust their children
to the care and supervision of the local school system. Establishing
this trust is not done blindly. While parents likely know and
interact with teachers and other school officials, few have ever
heard of Andrew Hill (the president of programming), who has
a daily influence on what children are learning. Considering
that even a class field trip requires a parental permission slip,
I find it very troubling that most states do not provide parents
with the opportunity to choose for themselves whether or not
‘Channel One’ should be a part of their children’s education…"
Obligation commends Senator Shelby
for standing up for children all over the country. He not only
recognizes the problem with wasting student’s time, but he is
seeking to do something about it.
A Senate hearing would be very
beneficial to the public. When the Senate last held a hearing
on the controversial Channel One in 1991, Channel One was brand
new and few had any experience with this advertising device.
Now seven years of content and studies have accumulated that
must be examined in the sunlight of a public hearing.
There were two mistakes in Senator
Shelby’s press release. First, Andrew Hill was identified as
the "Hollywood creator of Channel One." He is not.
As we corrected it above, he is the president of programming.
This mistake is not significant because the point Senator Shelby
was making is that this man has control over an hour a week of
what our children listen to and watch. Andrew Hill has enormous
power to dump into a classroom whatever he chooses. He is not
a journalist. He is not an educator. He was hired last year from
CBS’s entertainment division.
Also, the press release mentions
that the in-school TV show includes graphic and R-rated movie
reviews. Obligation has never seen such movie reviews on the
show. What Channel One does is daily advertises to children their
web site, www.channelone.com, and the young anchors urge the
students to go to the site. It’s on the web site that Channel
One unbelievably has reviews of R-rated movies and explicit-content
CDs. Channel One believes that "Pulp Fiction", "Kiss
the Girls", "How to be a Player", and other graphic
adult movies are not only fare for teens and pre-teens, they
encourage kids to write their own movie review after they have
seen the movie and email it to Channel One for posting
Senator Shelby stated that Channel
One contained a survey of growing parental tolerance of drug
use. Mr. Hill, speaking for Channel One, denied that was ever
on Channel One. Obligation has proof that Senator Shelby is absolutely
correct and Mr. Hill is misinformed.
Andrew Hill was quoted in the
Birmingham News as saying, "If he (Sen. Shelby) thinks kids
have something better to do 12 minutes a day, I would think the
U.S. Congress has something better to do (than investigate Channel
One) as well."
Jim Metrock, president of Obligation,
said, "Mr. Hill’s comment show the utter arrogance Channel
One has. Of course, Mr. Hill is not happy with the prospect of
public scrutiny. His show is a joke. The whole company is a house
of cards. Students have been exploited long enough. Our files
are full of Channel One documents and tapes that will stun the
Senators."
Obligation urges all concerned
parents and other taxpayers from around the country to contact
Senator Shelby and thank him for taking on this institutionalized
waste of student time and taxpayer money. Senator Shelby’s phone
number: 202-224-5744 or you can go to Obligation’s Government
Contact page to connect over the web.
