While Drew Tiene did discuss some benefits and drawbacks of Channel One (“Channel One: Good or Bad News for Our Schools?” May 1993), his article focused exclusively on what students learned from the program's 10-minute daily diet of news. It did not examine what students may be learning from the controversial two-minute daily diet of commercials—which is the focus of most criticism of the program.
Critics claim that it is improper, and perhaps illegal, to “sell” school time to commercial outlets. How can we justify taking time out of the school day (or adding time) to sell products in a mandatory student viewing session, even when accompanied by a slick news program and a bonanza of free telecommunication equipment for the school (Graves 1990, Tate 1989)? Yet, that is exactly what is happening in thousands of senior high schools and increasing numbers of junior high schools, with the likely prospect that Whittle Communications will design and market a parallel offering for elementary schools.
Questions about the advertising remain at the core of parent and school concerns. Does the advertising make a difference in student attitudes toward the products advertised? How do the students respond to a persistent, daily diet of advertising in their classrooms? We sought answers to these questions in a research project that we conducted in Michigan schools.
Our research surveyed viewers and nonviewers of Channel One in two pairs of high schools matched on income, racial composition, state testing scores, per-pupil expenditures, population density, and student-teacher ratios (Greenberg and Brand 1993). We tested students—373 in Channel One schools and 454 in control schools—twice on news knowledge and once on advertising issues.
Our news test results were generally consistent with the results summarized by Tiene: Viewing students learned about news issues presented on Channel One and thus were better informed about those public issues than nonviewers. This carried over —ally to their news learning outside of the Channel One context, but not at all in terms of any expressed greater interest in news in general.
But What About The Advertising?
In order to test the effects of advertising on students, we logged all the products that were advertised on Channel One for four weeks prior to the first wave of our testing in the schools. Of the 16 different products advertised, we asked questions about the five most frequently advertised.
Specific products. We asked students to evaluate each of the products using a seven-point, agree-disagree scale in the following manner: “Of all the chips available, XX chips are the best.” We summed the average evaluation scores separately for the viewing and nonviewing students and found that for each product evaluated—chips, a beverage, sneakers, and two candies—the average score for the viewing students was higher than for the nonviewers. When we calculated across the individual products, we found that Channel One viewers thought more highly of products advertised on the program than nonviewers did.
Our second test was more stringent in that the students were not prompted with product names. They were given eight product categories—gum, juice, burgers, candy, mints, sneakers, cough drops, and pop—and were asked to identify the brand they most likely would purchase. Our survey showed that viewers of Channel One are more likely to say they would purchase products advertised on the program than nonviewers. For two products—sneakers and mints—there was a 9 percent difference between the two groups, and overall there was an average 4 percent difference in the likelihood that students would intend to purchase the products advertised. Overall, viewers cited more brands that were advertised on the program than nonviewers did, and they indicated stronger intentions to purchase brands advertised on the program.
Next, each student indicated whether or not he or she had “recently” purchased any of 12 products that had been advertised on Channel One. There was no difference between the viewing and nonviewing groups in terms of recent purchases.
- money is everything;
- a nice car is more important than school;
- designer labels make a difference;
- I want what I see advertised; and
- wealthy people are happier than the poor.
Figure 1. Student Responses to “Materialism” Scale Items
Response / Channel One: But What About the Advertising? - table
Item: | Viewers | Nonviewers | probability |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. “Money isn't everything.”* | 4 | 3.7 | <.06 |
| 2. “Having a nice car is important, but school is more important.”* | 2.5 | 2.3 | <.10 |
| 3. “I don't care whether my clothes have a designer label on them.”* | 4.3 | 4 | <.04 |
| 4. “When I watch commercials, I usually want what is being shown.” | 3 | 2.8 | <.05 |
| 5. “Most people who have a lot of money are happier than most people who have only a little money.” | 3.5 | 3.3 | ns |
| Average Materialism Score: | 17.3 | 16 | <.002 |
| *Items were scored from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Starred items were recorded so that a higher score on each item and on the overall index reflects more materialistic attitudes. Thus, you could read item 2 as “Money is everything,” etc. |
Summing across all five items, we found a very strong statistical difference, suggesting that regular watching of Channel One reinforces materialistic attitudes. This conclusion is limited only by the fact that we were unable to ask these questions of the students before they began to watch Channel One, and they may have had different attitudes about the value of material items before they started viewing the program.
Nevertheless, this study provides evidence of advertising effects that are at least as substantial as those reported for news learning. This should not be surprising; the care that goes into crafting the advertising is at least as extensive as that which goes into designing the news portion of the program. Both the news and ads appear to do the jobs for which they were intended: they inform young viewers about current events, and they inform them about (and enhance their desire for) specific products.
So, Is Channel One Worth It?
Repeating the closing question in Tiene's article, whatever answer is chosen ought to reflect awareness of Channel One's advertising effects. At present, the answer to the question “Is Channel One worth viewing?” is more likely to be political rather than educational, with the argument turning more to ethical questions than to those that social science or standardized testing can answer. It is more than curious that other researchers have not studied the impact of the advertising that has been so severely criticized. Indeed, the major three-year study funded by Whittle Communications was not permitted to examine the advertising issue (Johnston and Brzezinski 1992, Johnston and Anderman 1993).
One might have anticipated that advertising would have less of an impact than our data demonstrate here. After all, these youngsters are bombarded daily with advertising from adolescent-oriented radio stations and magazines as well as television. Commercials for soft drinks, jeans, candies, skin cleansers, gum, movies, and sneakers consistently target young consumers. The in-school showing, however, perhaps offers an implicit endorsement of advertised brands and an opportunity for paying closer attention to the ads than students would get in a group or at home, where they can use the remote control to quickly remove any advertising from the screen. Perhaps with regular exposure to so many ads for so many different brands, the in-school showing provides an excuse for differentiating among the hordes of brand names.
Even more compelling is the difference in “materialism” scores. We might speculate that Channel One has violated the final haven of escape from commercialism—the school building—and has eroded the students' resistance to advertising. Students may even be reverting to a more puerile “gimme” stage. On the other hand, soft drink machines and other marketing/advertising ventures have long had a place in school buildings. Why should one more effort make any difference? The answer is that there may well be something different about watching a professional news program and national market advertising specially designed for young viewers.
Finally, Channel One provides educators with an excellent opportunity to educate youth in consumer behavior skills. The initiative appears, however, to have been lost. Nowhere have we seen discussion about using Channel One to further understanding of persuasive strategies or consumer needs and motivations. Curricular goals for the program (as reviewed by Johnston and Anderman 1993) focus on incorporating news content into teachers' lesson plans but ignore advertising.
A curriculum component that includes Channel One commercials could diminish, and perhaps reverse, the advertising's impact and head off parents' and critics' fears. A typical curriculum might include lessons on advertising's selling intent, the technical ways in which ads improve a product's image, the use of celebrity endorsements, emotional appeals, premium appeals, targeting strategies and so on (Roberts et al. 1980).
These final speculations provide interesting notions for subsequent research efforts. The bottom line for school districts, however, may be how badly they want or need the telecommunication equipment included in the Channel One package offering, and whether they want to pay that price to get better informed—and more greedy—young citizens.
