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TV
programs are lures designed to deliver an audience to advertisers.
CHANNEL ONE
Channel One is a commercial enterprise designed to deliver
students, within their school classrooms, as a captive audience, to advertisers
during a valuable "day-part" which is uncluttered by other ads.
For delivering some 8 million students as an audience
for ads targeted at youth (candy, cereals, cosmetics, clothes), some 12,000
schools get "free" TV/VCR hardware and a 10 minute daily "infotainment"
news program with 2 minutes of ads.
Disclaimer:
Warning!
I am not neutral about Channel One.
Channel One trade ad
in Advertising Age:
"We have the UNDIVIDED ATTENTION of millions of teenagers for 12
minutes a day. 8.1 million teenagers in classrooms nationwide .... And
since they're not channel surfing, talking on the phone or getting snacks
from the kitchen, they're tuning into the world and to you. To reach the
largest teen audience around, call (212) 508-6800."
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An Editorial:
In Opposition to Channel One
Commercial TV is the appropriate place for commercial
persuasion.
I believe the issue is not the presence of ads in the classroom,
but the purpose, why they are there, and the procedures, how they
are handled.
If students are expected to be passive receivers of these persuasive
messages, either in terms of buying the products or of "feeling
good" about them, then there should be no ads: no Channel One,
no commercialism in the classroom.
However, ads should be studied as part of a language arts program
or a critical thinking program: analyzed as units of persuasion,
treated seriously as examples of carefully crafted nonrational persuasion.
Ideally, such viewing and analysis should be planned, prepared,
and controlled by the teacher (not the advertisers), using videotaped
ads, or magazine ads. Ideally, this should be done by a trained
teacher, in a coherent program, with the goal -- in a free democratic
society -- of teaching the greatest number of citizens how to analyze
persuasion from any source...
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Alex Molnar, Center
for the Analysis of Commercialism in Education:
"Commercial activities now shape
the structure of the school day, influence the content of the school
curriculum, and determine whether children have access to a variety
of technologies. Moreover, it appears that there is an emerging trend
for marketers to attempt to bundle together advertising and marketing
programs in schools across a variety of media and thus gain a dominant
position in the schoolhouse market. A leader in this trend is Primedia,
which owns CoverConcepts, Seventeen magazine, and Channel One..."
Commercial TV is the appropriate place for commercial
persuasion.
If your school has Channel One, you may want to download this
Ads in the Classroom: True/False Quiz
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