TV Program With Ads to Be Offered to Schools Nationwide Next Year

Whittle Communications, already under fire from national education groups, said today that it plans to offer its commercially sponsored Channel One news program for teen-agers to schools nationwide starting next spring.

The media company based in Knoxville, Tenn., said it has modified its original plans for the service and intends to make two additional channels of educational programming available to the schools.

The Channel One project had come under fire from many national education groups and other officials because it meant students would be compelled to view advertising during the school day.

California School Supt. Bill Honig, saying “our students’ minds aren’t for sale,” warned that state public schools accepting the program would be docked for time students spent watching it.

But Chairman Christopher Whittle, saying he had listened to the criticism, said schools that sign up for Channel One will be able to have only some--rather than all--of their classrooms wired to receive the program. And he said students would not be required to watch.

The original plan, tested in six schools, was to show the program to the entire student body every day.

Nonetheless, Whittle said schools that participate still will be obliged to show the daily 12-minute news program with the two minutes of ads in those classrooms with the Channel One equipment every school day.

In addition to the Channel One service, Whittle said his company will donate 1,000 hours of satellite time every school year for non-commercial educational programming to be carried on a new channel called the Classroom Channel.

The Classroom Channel would be run by a board independent of Whittle Communications that would decide how it would be operated.

Whittle said it was likely the board would decide against allowing advertising on that service. Schools could pick and choose what they want to use from that channel, he said.

He said Whittle Communications would donate $500,000 a year for the board to acquire rights to programming for the Classroom Channel.

Whittle said he was also developing a third network, the Educators Channel, that would carry programming designed for educators.