Review
by Roy F. Fox,
Praeger, $22.50, 210 pages
Take one part snake oil. Mix in liberal amounts of a promised national curriculum sold to thousands of schools. Fold in the fancy MTV-style news. Wrap it up in $50 000 worth of installed electronic hardware. The cooked up result is Channel One. Apply generously to schoolchildren who are forced to be in classrooms where the broadcasting takes place.
Harvesting Minds: How TV Commercials Control Kids by Roy F. Fox, is a strong indictment of how Channel One, the U.S. company that broadcasts a daily news program into schools in 48 states, markets to children with propaganda techniques, earning $100 million in annual revenue. Fox, a teacher at the University of Missouri-Columbia, presents his findings from a two year study and it isn't pretty.
Many people who have not actually watched Channel One think of it as educational TV, because that is how it has been marketed, writes Fox. The notion conjures up images of college profs in horn-rimmed glasses holding pointers at Blackboards. But that is not the case. Actually, Channel One is more commercial than network TV; it's hipper, faster-moving, full of loud rock music ñ directly and indirectly, its always selling something.
Channel One is the brainchild of Christopher Whittle, the former owner of Esquire magazine. Whittle achieved wealth and fame by designing ads for the "captive-audience market," ads tailored for highly specific audiences such as patients in doctors' offices. In 1989, Whittle tested Channel One in six schools. In exchange for receiving Channel One, the schools agreed to have at least 90 percent of their students watch Channel One. Schools must supply the company with attendance records. Each program must be watched in its entirety, shows cannot be interrupted and teachers do not have the right to turn the program off. In return, schools receive up to $50 000 worth of electronics such as colour televisions, VCR's, and a satellite dish capable of picking up only Channel One's signal. Schools must return the electronic equipment if they stop requiring that kids watch.
Created for a young audience, Channel One programs and commercials feature youthful news anchors. The production techniques closely resemble those of MTV with very brief segments, rapid camera cuts, slow-motion and soft-focus video images. Regardless of what is in the newscasts, they always contain 2 minutes of ads targeted directly at the kids: Levi's jeans, Bubblicious gum, Michael Jordan-endorsed sneakers. Each 30 second ad cost advertisers $157,000, more than twice the cost of a commercial on prime time television news.
Fox found that Channel One has now spread to 48 states, reaching 8 million U.S. teens, roughly one-third of those in that age group. He debunks claims by Channel One that its broadcasts help kids become more aware of current events. Fox's evidence is an overwhelming no. Channel One also claims that kids are becoming more media-literate as a result of its broadcasts. Again Fox proves that claim to be misleading. The kids are very aware of commercials, he says, to the point of knowing details about brand names, packaging and product slogans, but they do not know more about how the commercials were made, or how target demographics are chosen or marketing plans are drawn up. Some kids have seen the same commercials more than 100 times.
In Canada, Channel One's counterpart, albeit completely unrelated, is YNN, which follows a similar format and business plan. Although the New Brunswick Department of Education once considered allowing YNN into N.B. schools, the department has stuck by its decision to keep it out of public schools. But YNN has just signed a new contract in the North York school district, just outside of Toronto and the Mike Harris government in Ontario seems willing to listen to other proposals that will provide technology for schools in exchange for "captive audience programming." Can other provinces be far behind?
Fox's book provides new ammunition against a company and the concept that sells more flash and dash than substance, making a killing on the backs of our kids. In a time of increasing commercialism in all aspects of daily life, Fox sends a cautionary signal to not believe everything we see.
Mike Gange teaches Media Studies and Journalism at Fredericton High. janmike@nbnet.nb.ca