Making a Killing on Our Kids

Review by Mike Gange

Harvesting Minds: How TV Commercials Control Kids
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 school children 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 dollars in annual revenue. Fox, a teacher at the University of Missouri-Columbia, presents his findings from a two year study and it is not 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 this is not the case. Actually,

Channel One is more commercial than network TV; its hipper, faster-moving, full of loud rock music and directly or 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 marketer" ads tailored for highly specific audiences such as patients in doctors waiting rooms. In 1989, Whittle tested Channel One in six schools. In exchange for receiving Channel One, schools agreed to have at least 90 percent of their students watching the 12 minute programs. 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 $50,000 worth of electronics, such as color televisions, VCRs and a satellite dish capable of picking up Channel One’s signal. Schools must return the electronic equipment if they stop requiring kids to watch.

According to Fox, Channel One is created for a young audience with programs and commercials that 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: Levis Jeans, Blubblicious gum, Michael Jordan endorsed sneakers. Each 30 second ad costs advertisers nearly $160, 000, more than twice the cost of a commercial on prime time television news.

Fox found that Chanel One has now spread to 48 states, reaching 8 millions 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 aware of commercials, he says, to the point of knowing details about the 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. Fox has found that some kids have seen the same commercials hundreds of times.

In Harvesting Minds: How TV Commercials Control Kids, Roy Fox provides 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 or increasing commercials in all aspects of daily life, Fox sends out a cautionary signal not to believe everything we see.

Mike Gange teaches Media Studies and Journalism at Fredericton High.