“Entertainmenteen” Magazine Goes Bust

January 12, 2001

PRIMEDIA, Channel One’s parent company, had a problem. One of their top
publications, Seventeen magazine, was in a deadly battle with new competitors
like Teen People and Cosmo Girl. PRIMEDIA came up with a new magazine called
Entertainmenteen that would be aimed at preteens. This way, as their press
release said at the time, young girls could be locked in at a younger age
and then moved over to Seventeen at the proper time. "Get ’em while
they’re young" so to speak.

Channel One was to play a key role in the effort to pull this plan off.
They were to run commercials for Entertainmenteen to their captive audience
of preteens in middle schools. Millions of preteens were compelled to watch
the commercials pushing this teen celebrity magazine. The ads were suggestive.
If you read the magazine, a child would find out about a star’s "private" life.
They would learn a star’s "secrets." The stars were "hot" and "sexy."

Jim Metrock, Obligation president said, "If a parent saw the Channel
One commercial for Entertainmenteen, he or she would have hit the roof.
They had a lot of gall to push a celebrity magazine on children during
school. The teachers who allowed that to go on in class, needed their heads
examined. I had to get a subscription to this magazine so I could talk
about it with some credibility. This was a joke of publication. It was
cheap, in more ways than one. It showed what PRIMEDIA thought about children."

"Evidently, Entertainmenteen appealed to very few children, which is encouraging," Metrock
said. "Channel One failed to sell this magazine even though their ads for
this garbage were compelled viewing by millions of preteens. Channel One ran
a heavy schedule of commercials beating this magazine into children’s brains.
I think Channel One is losing its credibility with children as fast as it is
losing it with teachers and the public. It is deplorable that Dr. Paul Folkemer,
the VP of Education who gives final approval to all commercials, thought that
this product was appropriate for schoolchildren. We could talk for a long time
about the age-inappropriate content in this magazine, but I will mention only
one. Their very last issue featured a movie review of a film about the infamous
sexual pervert Marquis de Sade. I don’t think anyone other than Channel One and
PRIMEDIA will mourn the loss of Entertainmenteen."