Not so long ago, someone from
Primedia, inc. ("a targeted
media company with print, video and Internet businesses focused on consumer and business-to-business audiences."*) had the brilliant idea that there was a way to cram
advertisements down a target audience with growing buying power's (i.e.
teenagers) collective throat and seem
humanitarian by doing so. In 1990, the
Channel One Network debuted.
The Channel One Network largely (and almost solely) consists of Channel One News; which is about three minutes of commercials from such corporate giants as PepsiCo and Nike and ten minutes of news-like programming delivered by college-aged men who seem to be desperately trying to be "hip" and edgy and nubile young college girls (Channnel One alumnae include MTV News' Serena Altschul and The View's Lisa Ling).
In 1991, when I was a sophomore, my High School received Channel One programming for the first time. Moderately-sized black television sets were mounted on ungainly black, metal things placed high up on the classroom walls. These televisions were wired to a central box where Channel One broadcasting would be beamed each night, and were, I believe unusable for anything else but Channel One. Each day at a set time the televisions would come on as if by magic and the 13 minutes of torture would begin.
Other schools allowed their children to do something else if they did not wish to be subjected to the horrors of Channel one, but not mine. The mean old nun I had in first period strolled the aisles of the classroom making sure we were watching and not doing something frivolous, like reading. The newscasts were insipid and condescending and invariably slanted to some sort of Big Business is good viewpoint. The show was broadcast from the Channel One Hacienda, a set apparently modeled after one of the less succesful interior design schemes from MTV's The Real World. The entire show shone with phoniness and an overwhelming desire to seem "cool", after a few months the name Craig Jackson (one of the most egregiously cheesy ersatz hip anchors) could make me cringe in terror.
But the commercials were even worse. Many of them were specially tailored to their captive teen audience, and there were awful Nike commercials promoting a sort of faux-individualism that was obviously pandering to people who wanted to be rebels but had nothing to rebel against; there were noxious Pepsi ads with a fake feel-good heal the world theme; there were ads so horrible that the trauma has wiped them from my brain. Three minutes of ads, every day. Spoonfed to an audience larger than the then most popular teen drama on at the time (Beverly Hills 90210). At the time it struck me as vaguely orwellian, upon reflection I can admire the evil brilliance of it. Channel One is still on in classrooms today; 90210 is long gone. Channel One is relatively cheap to produce. Aaron Spelling should take notes.
* From the primedia website.