Media Ethics: Issues and Cases 8th Edition by Philip Patterson, Lee Wilkins

Exercise 7

Channel One: Commercialism in Schools
ROZALYN OSBORN
University of Missouri
PHILIP PATTERSON
Oklahoma Christian University
Channel One is a 12-minute newscast designed for teenagers-middle school through high school-broadcast via satellite into classrooms across the United States. At its peak, the channel's programming was viewed in more than 350,000 classrooms, in 12,000 schools, and by about 8 million students every day-about 40 percent of the nation's total students in this age group.
Channel One was first developed by Chris Whittle of Whittle Communications in 1989 in Knoxville, Tennessee. The program was later owned by Primedia Inc., the owner of the Weekly Reader , New Yorker magazine , and Soap Opera Digest and most recently by Alloy Media and Marketing creators of "Gossip Girl" and other teen fare deemed "raunchy" by its critics.
The original appeal of Channel One was that it offered to provide each subscribing school with a satellite dish, networked cable wiring, a VCR, and a television for every classroom. The equipment was provided, installed, and maintained at no cost to the school. In return, schools agree to air Channel One to a large majority of their students every day.
What lies at the center of the debate over Channel One and programs like it is advertising. As part of the twelve-minute program, students view 2 minutes of advertising. In one school year, students who view Channel One see the equivalent of about one day of class time in commercials.
Channel One supporters maintain the technology and information the outlet provides are invaluable, particularly in poorer schools. They contend that brief exposure to advertising is worth the gain in technology and materials. But critics focused on the outlet's commercial aspect, maintaining that schools should be a protected environment. By accepting the commercialization that comes with Channel One , opponents argue that schools are targeting a captive audience.
Commercial Alert, a Washington, D.C., watchdog group, claimed that " Channel One doesn't belong in schools because it conveys materialism and harmful messages to children, corrupts the integrity of the schools, and degrades the moral authority of schools and teachers" (Kennedy 2000, 21). Eventually the critics of Channel One went silent and the owners of the program continued to make money off of a guaranteed audience with thirty second commercials commanding a fee of up to $200,000. And advertisers had good reason to pay the money. Not only did they have a captive audience, they had an alert one. A 2006 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics proved that children remembered the two minutes of commercials more than the ten minutes of news. At various times, Channel One had forged arrangements for copy from both NBC and CBS.
In the summer of 2012, a Boston non-profit called Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) re-ignited the controversy when they urged states to drop the 12-minute newscast, which had won a Peabody Award in 2005 for its coverage of the conflict in Sudan, saying that it was nothing more than a business ploy to subject children to commercials. In addition, the CCFC claims that some of the Channel One content was questionable.
The Boston group wrote letters to 42 state superintendents urging them to take a look at the content of the program which reached thousands of students daily. In addition to questioning the number and content of the ads, CCFC claimed that Channel One spent time promoting its website, which the group says advertised a $7.49/minute psychic and promoted other websites with questionable material. The group also claimed that one full day of instruction time is lost just to the two minutes of commercials that Channel One was contractually allowed to air.
Josh Golin, the associate director of CCFC, claims that the network is being coy with ads which show a different version in the classroom from that shown online version where parents could, presumably, monitor the content. Golin claims that Channel One also has consistently refused to produce a list of the advertisers on the site accessed on August 11, 2012.
A review of the Channel One website in the summer of 2012 revealed ads for Puma, Vistaprint and Lowes and also a link to the URL.com website which CCFC claims has had such stories as "Reader Hookup Confession: My BF's Mom Caught Me Giving Him Oral Sex!"
Alabama school Superintendent Tommy Bice told FoxNews.com that Channel One programming was now under review by his state, but added that decisions about using Channel One were local decisions. And on the local level, many districts did vote to opt out of the programming. In 2011, the reach of Channel One had shrunk to less than 230,000 classrooms down from 440,000 in 1999.
Obligation, Inc., a watchdog group for childhood education and a long-time critic of Channel One , claimed that Channel One had "a long history of fudging their audience claims in their sales literature." Eventually Channel One lowered its claims of "nearly six million" viewers to "nearly 5.5 million" viewers. In discussing the problems at Channel One , Obligation, Inc.'s Jim Metrock said:
Schools no longer have time for Channel One 's nonsense. Academic time can't be wasted anymore. The silliness and the often age-inappropriateness of Channel One 's content is angering school administrators, teachers, parents, and students. Channel One 's recent partnership with white board manufacturer Promethean in an effort to muscle into elementary schools will be a financial disaster for both firms. The downward spiral is accelerating for Channel One. The recent loss of half of their news anchors shows the employees are heading for the exits.
How would you respond to the argument that Channel One helps students learn, particularly about difficult issues?