Channel One News is a marketing company whose
main purpose is to get advertising to a captive audience of impressionable schoolchildren. The company loans a school TV equipment in exchange for demanding the school show their daily, 12-minute, hyper-commercial TV show to students. That time equals one lost week of instructional time per year. No educational organization endorses the use of Channel One News. Channel One is disproportionately found in schools in low-income areas.
In 2007, Channel One News became even more controversial when it was acquired by Alloy Media and Marketing (creators of Gossip Girl and other raunchy teen and preteen fare). Once the company claimed 8+ million students under contract to watch their program. Since 1997 they have continued to lose schools and now they claim they have “nearly six million” students watching their program.
A prestigious and somewhat intimidating number of educators' professional associations and other child advocate professionals are on record opposing Channel One. Examples include the National Council of Teachers of English, and the American Academy of Pediatrics.
The AAP notes:
School advertising also appears under the guise of educational TV: Channel One. Currently available in 12 000 schools, Channel One consists of 10 minutes of current-events programming and 2 minutes of commercials. Advertisers pay $200 000 for advertising time and the opportunity to target 40% of the nation's teenagers for 30 seconds. According to a recent government report, Channel One now plays in 25% of the nation's middle and high schools and generates profits estimated at $100 million annually.
Academics have critiqued the crass commercialism of Channel One.