Firm Plans TV News Show for Schools, Including Ads

A specialty publishing firm plans to start testing a daily television news program--complete with commercials--that would be beamed from Los Angeles into classrooms nationwide in an ambitious and controversial effort to court teen-age consumers.

Whittle Communications will spend $5 million to test “Channel One” and has hired Susan Winston, a former producer of ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” to head production, which will be based in Los Angeles.

The five-week test of the program--controversial because it involves showing commercials in the classroom--will begin March 6 and involve four to six high schools and middle schools across the country, officials said. So far, only two schools, one in Detroit and another in Kansas City, Kan., have agreed to participate in the program.

The 12-minute program would combine news, features, educational material and two minutes worth of commercials, according to Whittle officials. “Channel One” would be transmitted via satellite to schools during the morning, but school officials can tape the show for broadcast at a later time.

Free Equipment

“It will be a news show, such as the “Today” show or “Good Morning America” done for teens,” said Donna Cheek, a spokeswoman for Nashville, Tenn.-based Whittle, which currently distributes magazines and other promotional material to 10,000 schools. Time Inc. recently bought a 50% stake in Whittle Communications.

Whittle will provide the schools with $50,000 worth of equipment--such as television monitors, videocassette recorders and satellite dishes--free of charge. Sponsors would pay the estimated $100 million needed to launch the program nationwide and reach 51 million students and their 2.8 million teachers.

Cheek said the program, the first TV show for Whittle, will not accept ads for alcoholic beverages, tobacco products, contraceptives and feminine hygiene products. Each school principal will be able to preview the day’s show and may prohibit the program from being shown if it is deemed unsuitable for viewing.

Such a program could be a valuable tool in reaching teen-age consumers, says Peter Zollo, executive vice president of Teenage Research Unlimited, a marketing research firm based in Oak Brook, Ill. Although the number of teen-agers has fallen since 1975, teens have seen their spending power balloon to about $79 billion annually--up 20% since 1985, Zollo said.

Reaching Target

Teens also have a greater say in what their parents buy and actually are spending more time in stores shopping for their families, Zollo says. Many companies also want a head start toward building customer loyalty and recognition among future consumers.

Advertising on “Channel One” is an opportunity for companies to “associate themselves with quality programming and getting a targeted group of students who are, in some ways, captive” in the classroom, Zollo said.

Ads and corporate promotions have filtered into the classroom in the past. Schools have readily accepted, for example, chemistry kits or research material bearing corporate logos. But outright commercials for products are quite rare.

“Typically you won’t see those things in the classrooms,” said Bob Greene, coordinator of production at KLCS-TV, an educational station operated by the Los Angeles Unified School District. “If you did, it would be by mistake. A teacher might have taped something on television at home and might have forgot to erase the commercials.”

The commercials will likely meet with skepticism and resistance from many educators and others. Action for Children’s Television, for example, has already voiced its opposition to the program.

Ads Pays for Gear

“The general feeling is that when kids are in school, they should not be subject to commercials during instructional time,” said Dan Isaacs, who oversees senior high schools for the Los Angeles Unified School District. “Our schools would welcome the additional equipment,” he said, “but the commercial aspects would have to be reviewed very carefully.”

Whittle says that it is aware of potential resistance to the commercials. But the company said it could not afford to supply the television equipment, which can be used by schools for other purposes, free of charge without commercials.

‘It would be wonderful if you could bring the technology into the classroom without ads,” Cheek said. “But it’s not happening.”