In-Class TV Program Chided for Negative Influence on Kids

Written by Jim Brown

(AgapePress) — More than 1,000 Texas school districts are being asked to pull the plug on a controversial in-school television program.

The Channel One Network broadcasts a daily, ten-minute newscast to millions of students and educators in 12,000 middle, junior, and high schools across the United States. Channel One News, according to the network's Web site, features stories on "breaking news and in-depth issues" that affect the world, the nation, and teenagers. In addition to ten minutes of news, it includes two minutes of advertising.

Since its inception in 1990, the newscast has received both accolades and criticism for its content – the former from the entertainment and education industries, and the latter from pro-family groups and concerned parents.

Earlier this month, the Texas State Board of Education was urged to support a resolution asking all local school districts to cancel their contracts with the Channel One Network. The board has tabled the resolution until November.

Gary Ruskin is executive director of the group Commercial Alert, which is part of a broad coalition opposing the news and entertainment program. Ruskin says Channel One uses school time for commercial marketing, and promotes many products parents do not approve of.

"Things like violent and crass entertainment, like a movie called "Dude, Where's My Car?" – which was a movie glorifying two potheads who got so stoned they couldn't remember where they parked their car – or a movie called "Monkey Bone", which was a crass movie about a battle between a cartoonist and a part of his anatomy symbolized by a monkey," he says.

According to Ruskin, the network corrupts the integrity of public education. "It wastes tax dollars because it consumes an entire school week (of school time) every school year," he says. "That's a great deal of tax money that's wasted when it should be used to teach students – not have them see this kind of low-grade, advertised, school marketing program."

Ruskin also believes the network is bad for children's health, noting that at a time when children have an epidemic of obesity and skyrocketing levels of Type II diabetes, Channel One is promoting a parade of junk food products to kids. In addition, Commercial Alert contends the network misuses the compulsory attendance laws to force children to watch commercial advertising, promotes violent entertainment, conveys the wrong values to children, and encourages them to watch television instead of read.

Channel One is owned by a large media conglomerate called PRIMEDIA, and is produced out of New York City and Hollywood. Among its more well-known products are the magazines Motor Trend and Seventeen.

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