About.com, Advertised On C1N, Still Has Hardcore Porn

May 30, 2001

From Jim Metrock: Regrettably, Primedia has not removed their pornography from their Internet company, About.com. Primedia, parent company to Channel One, merged with About.com at the end of February. Since then Channel One has run many commercials for About.com on their in-school TV show and run banner ads for About.com on channelone.com.

I have urged Channel One to stop advertising their sister company, but have never received a reply. That is Channel One’s mode of operation – ignore parents and anyone who is critical of their company. Yet, they may have taken our advice, since there are no About.com banner ads on channelone.com as of today. There also haven’t been commercials for the past several weeks. I am sure this is hurting Channel One since they had been running up to two commercials A DAY for About.com previously.

It is difficult to understand Channel One. They may have suspended ads because they knew parents would be upset if they continued advertising a company that makes money off of trafficking hardcore pornography on the web. Or they may be lying low for a while. That is one of the problems with Channel One – a school has to advertise whatever Channel One executives decide they want to advertise. They even limit a school to a certain number of days that they can refrain from showing their controversial program and commercials.