NEW SOURCES

Channel One News (2008). Channel One Help. Retrieved May 8, 2008 from channelonehelp.com

De Vaney, A. (1998). Can and need educational technology become a postmodern enterprise?  Theory Into Practice, 37(1) pp.1-9

Johnston, C. (2001). Commercialism in classrooms. Pediatrics, 107(4), pp. 1-5

Project for Excellence in Journalism. (2007). State of the News Media 2007. Retrieved May 10, 2008 from the State of the News Media 2007: An Annual Report on American Journalism website: Stateofthenewsmedia.org/2007/narrative_online_economics.asp? cat=3&media=4

Ruskin, G. (1999). Coalition Wants Companies to Stop Advertising on Channel One. Letter presented to Procter & Gamble by Commercial Alert.

Saba, J. (2008, March). NAA Reveals Biggest Ad Revenue Plunge in More Than 50 Years. Retrieved May 10, 2008 from Editor and Publisher: America's oldest journal covering the newspaper industry website: editorandpublisher.com

Weintraub-Austin, E., Chen, Y.C., Pinkleton, B., and Jessie Quintero Johnson. (2006). Benefits and costs in a middle school setting and the role of media-literacy training. Pediatrics, 117(3), pp. 1-10

Useful Book Resources on the Topic of Channel One

The following books are helpful to look at to get a better idea of what impact Channel One has on society, especially in schools and children.  Many of these books can also be found on Google books previews or Amazon.  I've included the descriptions that can be found on the book details.

 
By Ann De Vaney.  Published 1994.  
Watching Channel One: The Convergence of Students, Technology, and Private Business
Description: The book covers case studies, research studies, as well as personal stories from parents, teachers, and students.  The book comes from an approach analyzing commercial interests (advertising), social, political, and ethical implications of Channel One.


By Randall Curren.   Published 2006.
Philosophy of Education
Description: An Anthology brings together the essential historical and contemporary readings in the philosophy of education. Addresses topical issues such as teacher professionalism and accountability, the commercialization of schooling, multicultural education, and parental choice.


By Brian Goldfarb.  Published 2002.
Visual Pedagogy: Media Cultures in and Beyond the Classroom
Description: Combining media studies, pedagogical theory, and art history, and including an appendix of visual media resources and ideas about the most productive ways to utilize visual technologies for educational purposes, Visual Pedagogy will be useful to educators, administrators, and activists.


By Juliet B. Schor.  Published 2004.
Born to Buy
Description: Sophisticated advertising strategies convince kids that products are necessary to their social survival. Ads affect not just what they want to buy, but who they think they are and how they feel about themselves. Based on long-term analysis, Schor reverses the conventional notion of causality: it's not just that problem kids become overly involved in the values of consumerism; it's that kids who are overly involved in the values of consumerism become problem kids. In this revelatory and crucial book, Schor also provides guidelines for parents and teachers.


By Deron Boyles.  Published 1998.
American Education and Corporations: The Free Market Goes to School  
Description: This work argues that private businesses use public schools as worker training sites, resulting in a devalued teaching force, students as uncritical consumers, and schools as economic markets. Boyles analyzes school-business partnerships, revealing false philanthropy and the ulterior motives behind fast-food reading campaigns and supermarket "sales for schools" promotions.



By Roy F. Fox.  Published 1996. 
Harvesting Minds: How TV Commercials Control Kids
Description: (Review) In this eye-opening work, Fox explores the impact of the commercials carried by Channel One--and, by extension, all media--on children, how children respond to these commercials, and what we can do about the situation.   Publishers Weekly

Additional Sources on Commericialism in Schools, Channel One, etc.

Channel One's Mixed Grades In Schools By Constance L. Hays
The New York Times
December 5, 1999, Sunday, Late Edition - Final
http://www.ibiblio.org/commercialfree/presscenter/art_12599.html

News for a Teen Market: The Lessons of Channel One.
Journal of Curriculum and Supervision, v13 n4 p339-56 Sum 1998
Abstract: Describes the types of stories that Channel One covers and the characteristics and configuration of its news sources. Focusing mostly on anchor personalities and politicians, Channel One news serves as a promotional vehicle for itself and youth culture, providing a friendly environment for controversial product advertisements. Such dramatic and personalized news reportage should probably not be defined as educational.

What is Commercialism in Schools?

http://www.ibiblio.org/commercialfree/commercialism.html

More Sources on Channel One and Commercialism

1. http://www.uiowa.edu/~cyberlaw/SchBoard/Other/chanone.html#The%20Concerns%20Regarding%20Channel
2. http://www.unesco.org/courier/2000_04/uk/apprend.htm
3. http://eric.ed.gov/ERICDocs/data/ericdocs2sql/content_storage_01/0000019b/80/16/64/12.pdf
4. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9802E1DF1E3BF931A15752C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=2
5. http://youthdevelopment.suite101.com/article.cfm/advertising_in_schools
6. http://www.commercialalert.org/issues/education/channel-one
7. http://www.eagleforum.org/educate/2004/may04/channel1.html
8. http://www.eagleforum.org/topics/channel-one/channel-one.html
9. http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/C/htmlC/channelone/channelone.htm

Advertising on school grounds is not philanthropy - it's marketing.

In too many cases, advertisers are interested in nothing more than the opportunity to market to students in a new setting. Profit, not education, is their priority.

Commercial intrusion in schools doesn't offer a solution to schools' financial woes. While corporate offers may sound like they're worth a lot of money on the surface, schools who've begun to accept, and even seek out these offers, find that the earnings are insignificant. Although they have opened the doors to advertisers, many schools are left without the textbooks, instructional materials, and qualified teachers necessary to provide students with a top-notch education.

For example:

• New York City's board of education signed contracts with companies that will place ads on the district's school buses. The board hopes to raise $53 million over nine years, or $5.9 million a year. In contrast, the New York City school system's annual budget is $8 billion.
  
  
• Facing a $35 million budget shortfall over three years, the school board in Seattle, WA, proposed selling advertising to raise funds. But the $1 million per year they hoped to raise from the advertising was not enough to convince community members to support the plan to sell access to students to the highest bidder. After five months of community protest, the school board rescinded the advertising policy.
  
  
• Schools that are signing multi-year exclusive contracts with cola companies are receiving as little as $3 per student in exchange for a monopoly on selling and advertising their beverages on campus.

http://www.ibiblio.org/commercialfree/commercialism.html

Channel One: It's ALL About the Money...

Channel One claims to be "the leading provider of television news and educational programs to America's secondary schools." But a University of Massachusetts-Amherst study found that schools that can afford to say no to Channel One do say no. The study found that the program is disproportionately shown in schools located in low-income communities and communities of color. Channel One is found where the least money is available for education, where the least amount is spent on textbooks and other academic materials.

It is dubious whether such news provides educational or civic benefits to either students or educators.

-- Professor William Hoynes, Vassar College

Yet communities with schools that contract with Channel One still pay dearly for this "opportunity." Channel One takes up precious classroom time with advertisements: each minute the programs air, taxpayers are paying -- and students are losing. A recent study by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Center for the Analysis of Commercialism in Education revealed that school time lost to Channel One costs taxpayers $1.8 billion dollars per year, $300 million to commercials alone.

http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=888

Main Issues With Channel One

Channel One has received major critcism from parents, educators, and policy makers. Listed below are the main issues with this program:

1. Channel One uses the compulsory attendance laws to force children to watch ads. Joel Babbit, then-president of Channel One, explained in 1994 why advertisers like Channel One: “The biggest selling point to advertisers [is] . . . we are forcing kids to watch two minutes of commercials.” 2. Channel One wastes precious school time. Channel One consumes the equivalent of one instructional week of school time each school year, including one full day watching ads.

3. Channel One helps advertisers bypass parents to promote products which parents may not approve of, such as exorbitantly expensive athletic sneakers and violent movies.

4. Channel One wastes tax dollars spent on schools. A 1998 study by Max Sawicky and Alex Molnar, titled “The Hidden Costs of Channel One,” concluded that Channel One’s cost to taxpayers in lost class time is $1.8 billion per year.

5. Channel One may harm children’s health. Channel One advertises Snickers, Twix, M&M’s, Pepsi and other junk food to children in classrooms. The Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported that “Obesity is epidemic in the United States.” Obesity is a major public health problem. Given skyrocketing levels of childhood obesity and diabetes, it is insanity for schools to encourage children to develop poor eating habits.

6. Channel One—not parents or school boards—decides its ads and program content. Channel One violates the principle of local control of education. Parents should be able to choose who may affect their children’s lives, not Channel One.

7. Channel One undermines parents’ efforts to teach positive values to their children. Channel One teaches a curriculum of materialism, that buying is good, and will solve your problems, and that consumption and self-gratification are the goals and ends of life.

8. Channel One corrupts the integrity of public education and diminishes the moral authority of schools and teachers. In effect, Channel One appropriates the authority of schools and teachers and transfers it to advertisers for these controversial products. Schools implicitly endorse the products that Channel One advertises.

A general picture of Channel One

Taking a snapshot look at the Channel One company from the words of multiple sources in recent news and research:

Google Finance & Hoover:

"This company hopes when students need news, they'll tune in to its TV channel first. Channel One operates the Channel One Network, a satellite channel that reaches about 7 million students in more than 300,000 classrooms with daily newscasts and educational videos. Launched in 1990, Channel One provides schools with the necessary broadcast equipment (TVs, monitors, satellite dishes) to view its programs free of charge. It also offers news and programming on its Web site. Most of the company's revenues come from advertising. Marketing and media company Alloy acquired Channel One from magazine publisher PRIMEDIA in 2007. "

http://finance.google.com/finance?cid=7634939

Media Post:

"In addition to interactivity and a crisper picture, digital distribution also benefits advertisers--making it easier to change the geographic coverage, creative content, and frequency of their ad campaigns. Channel One's 12-minute morning newscast, including two minutes of advertising, reaches about 6 million teenagers in 10,000 high schools across the country.

Last year, Channel One also struck a deal with NBC News for branded news content produced specially for Channel One, and tailored to the teenaged classroom audience. Channel One next plans to introduce student feedback and journalism platforms, giving students a chance to participate in news production.

If they haven't already, place-based and out-of-home video networks are hurrying to upgrade to digital distribution, in part because of the flexibility and control it offers advertisers. "

http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.showArticleHomePage&art_aid=81880

IPTV Technology:


By upgrading to digital technology, the Channel One Network will be able to deliver a sharper viewing experience of its news programming and it will ensure content can be easily integrated into today’s learning environment.

...Channel One News programming has been featured on leading networks and news programs, including NBC's Nightly News and The Today Show, CNN, ABC News, and Nightline.

With this movement to digital infrastructure, Channel One Network schools received a digital receiver head-end that is more flexible and has increased storage capabilities. It also allows programming to be burned directly to DVDs.

The investment in new technology this school year adds to a number of steps taken to make sure Channel One Network continues to provide high-quality programming and content, including upgrades to ChannelOne.com’s 24/7 broadband video news channel, ‘Livewire’, and a relationship with NBC News that allows the network to reach more global viewers.
According to Chief Executive Officer of Channel One Network, Kent Haehl, “We will continue to invest in technologies that allow us to stay on pace with a changing media environment, and provide an engaging, viewing experience to the many who rely on Channel One as their only source of news.”

Paul Folkemer, senior vice president of education at Channel One Network added, “With the new digital format, we will be able to provide a more engaging current events program for our students. Video-based learning improves the ability to understand and recall information. The new digital Channel One format will enhance an already valuable resource for educators who are using our program to ensure that their students know what is happening in the world.”  "

http://iptv.tmcnet.com/topics/iptv-technology/articles/26746-channel-one-enhances-viewing-learning-with-digital-technology.htm

Channel One Revisited: Prospective Teachers and the Role of American Higher Education:
A. J. Angulo & Susan K. Green

"Channel One is a privately-owned technology and news broadcast company that reaches...almost one-third of the nation’s middle and high school students between the ages of 12 and 17 (Channel One, 2006). Due to its size and scope, Channel One represents one of the single most successful diffusions of technology in public school history. Schools that enroll in Channel One’s services receive technology (i.e., televisions, VCRs, satellite dishes) and a direct link to the company’s 12-minute daily news and advertising broadcast. These schools receive the equipment in exchange for a contractual agreement stipulating that the televised news and advertisements will be shown to at least 90% of the school’s classrooms every day of the academic year."

http://www.springerlink.com/content/w33723h0117u6522/fulltext.pdf