Group worries about movie ads shown on school news program

Group worries about movie ads shown on school news program

Local principals and students aren't sure what all the fuss is about.

Channel One, the in-school news program aired daily in area schools, is geared toward a younger audience. With anchors dressed in the latest teen fashions and MTV-esque sets and graphics, the program gets at the heart of issues affecting its teen audience.

The service is free to the schools but does come at a price: The 13-to-15-minute newscast has a number of commercials.

Those commercials are causing a controversy for Commercial Alert, an organization that just released a report pointing out that 60 percent of the movies advertised on Channel One portray smoking.

The commercials themselves do not typically show actors smoking.

Commercial Alert is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is "to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy."

Local principals and students aren't sure what all the fuss is about.

From the moment the Channel One graphics appear on the screen and the music starts, almost every head in the classroom immediately turns to the screen.

Central Junior High principal Leland Gattis said Channel One is the only news some of his 634 students are exposed to.

Channel One's approach makes its stories appealing to the students' point of view, said Central High School principal Dr. Mike Cowan.

"I think the style in which they choose to deliver the news makes it more student friendly than what some of the traditional news broadcasts tend to do."

The content is often incorporated into classroom lessons. "Kids can really relate to it," Jackson Junior High principal Cory Crosnoe said.

In a survey conducted by Jackson Junior High, 90 percent of the teachers either mentioned a story that was on Channel One or used one of the stories as an example in class, Crosnoe said.

Jackson Middle School seventh-grader Kasey King said she watches Channel One almost every day and is not influenced by the commercials. Kacie Ritter, a junior at Scott City High School, said she often just tunes out the commercials.

Commercials on Channel One are also geared more to students than many of the commercials on nightly television, Cowan said.

Channel One does a lot of advertising that focuses on health. For example, it has shown commercials for the new food pyramid.

"They're selective," Jackson Middle School principal Rodney Pensel said. "They don't advertise products that would be bad for our kids."

ameyer@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 127