A broad coalition of companies, organizations and activists, ranging from Focus on the Family to Ralph Nader, have kicked off a campaign to stop Primedia’s Channel One from exploiting school children for commercial gain. Channel One is the in-school television program with a daily captive audience of about eight million children in 12,000 schools, broadcasting 10 minutes of “news,” music and filler, plus two minutes of advertising for a variety of products and services aimed at youngsters.

Is your schoolchild watching too much television? Eating too many junk foods and drinks instead of what’s healthy? Nagging you to buy expensive sneakers? Too easily swayed by advertising? If so, why are the schools encouraging all those things?

Corporate advertisers know that their television audience is dwindling rapidly. It used to be so easy to market their products to tens of millions in neat 30-second segments efficiently placed on the three major TV networks.