Measure to Ban School TV Program Fails

SACRAMENTO —  The Assembly voted Monday to keep the schoolhouse door open to Channel One, the much-debated televised news program with commercials playing in 160 California schools.

A bill to ban the television program from being shown in the schools was rejected when it mustered only 31 Assembly votes, 10 short of a majority. The bill may be reconsidered later.

Before the votes were cast, supporters of the ban were chastised by Channel One adherent Assemblyman Robert Frazee (R-Carlsbad), who compared them to book burners.

The hotly contested measure was one of the most heavily lobbied bills of the 1993 legislative session. The vote represents a major victory for Channel One’s producer, Whittle Communications of Knoxville, Tenn., which has spent more than $1 million the last four years opposing the legislation.

Whittle officials say their program provides news of current events tailored to the needs of a younger audience.

Opponents of Channel One include the powerful California Teachers Assn., various school boards and the Parent-Teacher Assn. They say Channel One force-feeds commercials to schoolchildren.

Schools receive the Channel One program free and are provided a satellite dish, videocassette recorders and television sets for each classroom that shows it.

In return, the schools promise to show the daily 12-minute program in its entirety for three years--or lose the equipment. The schools, which review the programs before they are broadcast to students, can reject up to 10% of the programs a year.

Programs include 10 minutes of news and feature stories pegged to a teen-age audience. And there are two minutes of commercials.

A Channel One 30-second commercial costs $156,000. Opponents warned that Whittle would be charging much more money as more schools join the network.

Channel One is operating in 12,000 schools nationwide.

The proposed ban on Channel One, SB 1027, had passed the Senate earlier. Its author is Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles).

“Commercial advertisements have no value as part of our K-12 curriculum,” said Assemblywoman Delaine Eastin (D-Fremont), chairman of the Education Committee, who handled the bill in the Assembly.

Eastin added that classroom instruction might benefit from televised news, “but when such programming is sprinkled with mandatory commercial advertisements, we compromise the integrity of the classroom.”

Channel One supporters, such as Frazee, compared opponents of Channel One to book burners of the 1930s.

“Here we are in the 1990s suggesting (that) this Legislature, in its wisdom, mandate the moral equivalent of book burning because, heaven forbid, our children would see television ads in school,” Frazee said.

Assemblyman Ross Johnson (R-La Habra) asked: “Why limit it to television ads? Should the Los Angeles Times be barred from our classrooms simply because it contains advertising for such things as lingerie and guns?”

Eastin replied: “Christ drove the money-changers from the temple--not the marketplace. The promoters do not belong in our schools.”

Whittle’s lobbying team included some of the biggest names operating in the Capitol, including Steven A. Merksamer, former chief of staff for former Republican Gov. George Deukmejian and Dennis E. Carpenter, a former state Senator from Orange County.