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Channel One Going Dark

Y2kTheNewOldies

Y2kTheNewOldies

https://www.channelone.com/channel-one-update/

https://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/channel-one-going-dark

Even though the Broadcasts ended in May there are still streaming contracts that are still at play for some school districts. Losing cable subscriptions at school districts were a factor here.

Opponents of Channel One News are celebrating the announcement by Houghton Mifflin that it is pulling the plug on the in-classroom broadcast service.

"Our last broadcast aired in May, and we will be winding down ongoing operations," the company announced on its website. "While the daily broadcasts have ended, the Channel One News video library and curriculum will remain active for premium subscription customers through the length of existing contracts.

The company said its coverage of climate change and environmental issues encouraged kids to protect the planet and inspired civic participation.

It was not the news so much as the two minutes of commercials kids were required to sit through that had children's advocates seeing red for the past 28 years.

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, one of its major critics, was breaking out the chocolate milk.

"This is a landmark day for children, and a testament to the tireless advocacy of those who believe classrooms should be free of corporate marketing,” said CCFC executive director Josh Golin. “Parents and educators have become increasingly wary of corporations targeting a captive audience of schoolchildren, and Channel One has been losing subscribers in droves with each passing year. We’re glad Houghton Mifflin Harcourt has finally pulled the plug on what was a terrible idea from the start.”
Click to expand...
 
I never got to see these broadcasts as the districts I attended did not utilize this service, whether through the dish or through an online contract. Nowadays, with students being bombarded by homework, test prep and testing (of course - more than ever before - thanks Common Core), this is just a waste of time for most teachers. Teachers are being pushed and stressed to the max by the states, districts and principals to teach everything that the CCSS wants them to do in one year. And yes, thanks to analog cable going away everywhere, schools don't utilize TVs anymore except for when the kids watch an educational DVD or VHS video (and yes, there's teachers out that still put in videotapes).
Middle school is so much different in 2018 than it was in 1994...
 
Huh, I didn't remember there being commercials in Channel One back when I was in school.
 
my middle school had C1 and their early 90s Magnavox CRT sets, but they still had TV/VHS VCRs on carts that were shared between classrooms, none of the C1 sets had VCRs hooked to them, only time the C1 sets were used was when they would show videos to the whole school or a bunch of classrooms including the C1 news and school announcements done by some students before C1, the middle school had block scheduling but the HS in the same district that had daily period scheduling didn't have C1, don't know if they still had C1 or when they got rid of it, I think most of the classrooms have projectors and smartboards now and this not a rich district
 
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In addition to the daily Channel One News broadcasts, the Channel One service also used to broadcast documentaries and other educational programs during the evening hours for school librarians to record and for teachers to screen in their classes. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to find a VHS tape at a garage sale containing one evening's Classroom Channel programming block and it began with this promotional video advertising the service.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80GOfX_yQd0
 
Never remember channel 1 when I was at Kalamazoo Central so I'm guessing that Kalamazoo Public School may not have used Channel One.
 
Scott2013 said:
In addition to the daily Channel One News broadcasts, the Channel One service also used to broadcast documentaries and other educational programs during the evening hours for school librarians to record and for teachers to screen in their classes. A few years ago, I was lucky enough to find a VHS tape at a garage sale containing one evening's Classroom Channel programming block and it began with this promotional video advertising the service.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80GOfX_yQd0
Click to expand...

we never watched any C1 programs besides the morning news and that was only in the middle school, although a lot things we watched were just recorded off the local PBS station, and watching those required a separate TV/VCR cart since none of the C1 TVs had individual VCRs hooked to them, many PBS stations would air programs made to be watched in school during the afternoon or overnight hours
 
I remember in school we would watch a mix of educational VHS tapes and videos pulled off UnitedStreaming online (now Discovery Education). Plenty of teachers still utilizing the latter's resources, but I'm not sure if the old videos are still up there nowadays. In elementary school our class would watch the occasional Scholastic tape (y'know, the montage of drawings set to the narration of a picture book?) Also every year when the book fair came around, the librarian would put in the VHS or DVD (depending on year) of the Scholastic preview video while we quietly sat on the carpet, most of us little ones thinking about begging our parents to buy a few more books. I don't remember watching anything that was taped off a PBS instructional TV block, as KCTS in Seattle had stopped doing that by the early 1990s and the school district just bought prerecorded tapes anyways.
Occasionally I had a teacher or two in middle school who would put in a Bill Nye tape for review, and a few times we watched prerecorded copies of Assignment Discovery episodes. Never got to watch any of those old Britannica films or anything like that, however...and the 16mm projectors were out of service by the time I went into school in the early '00s.

Channel One was always on Ku-Band satellite, Galaxy 4 in the mid '90s and later Galaxy 3R. The Classroom Channel shared the same transponder as C1.
 
A 25 plus year run isn't bad. Channel One served a good purpose despite those that tried to block it from its earliest existence. There simply are many more interactive teaching aids available than a daily broadcast now.
 
I go WAY back to the days when WQED reserved the middle part of its broadcasting day for
"educational programming" to be broadcast for viewing in schools.

Every once in awhile the nuns would wheel in a 15" black-and-white set and have us watch something.
 
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