Channel One News is Cancelled
After 28 years of targeting kids with corporate advertising in classrooms across the US, Channel One News has finally been cancelled. The decision by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt to pull the plug on the controversial “news” network represents a major victory for child advocates who have been fighting for commercial-free schools for decades.
“In essence Channel One positions students as consumers – much more so than it positions them as students.”
- William Hoynes, Professor and Chair of Sociology at Vassar College
(Featured in Captive Audience)
For a look back at how Channel One compelled a generation of kids to sit through a stream of ads at the start of every school day, take a look at our film Captive Audience.The film exposes the transformation of classrooms, hallways, cafeterias, and textbooks into advertising vehicles in the late 90’s and early 2000s, and lays out how education gets short-changed and democracy put at risk when schools become marketplaces.
Check out the trailer for Captive Audience below:
For a more comprehensive look at the multibillion-dollar youth marketing industry and the ethics of marketing to children, we also urge you to check out Consuming Kids.
Check out the trailer for Consuming Kids below:
