Classroom TV Firm Pays Lobbyists $640,000 : Education: Much of the money from Channel One has been used to fight legislation that would ban television commercials in school programs.

The company that hopes to place a television program, with commercials, in California public school classrooms has paid lobbyists and other professional persuaders $640,400 in the last 18 months, state records reveal.

Reports filed with the secretary of state show that Whittle Communications of Knoxville, Tenn., has hired three of the Capitol’s most successful lobbying firms to ease the way for its Channel One. That program consists of 10 minutes of current events and two minutes of commercials for such products as Burger King, Gatorade and Three Musketeers candy bars.

For two years, debate has raged between those opposed to pitching such products to junior and senior high school students as they sit in their classrooms and those who contend that the commercials are a small price to pay for the video educational systems that come free to schools that subscribe to Channel One.

Most of the lobbying money has been used for efforts to defeat legislation that would ban television commercials in public schools.

The lobbying firm of Nielsen, Merksamer, Hodgson, Parrinello & Mueller has received $169,959 in fees and expenses from Whittle in the last year and a half, according to the reports, which are required by state law.

Another $163,247 has been paid to Rose-Kindel, lobbyists in Sacramento and Los Angeles, while $100,333 has gone to Carpenter & Associates, one of the Capitol’s largest lobbyists.

In addition, there have been “other payments to influence” amounting to $206,861 paid to companies that are not registered lobbyists and do not have to be identified by Whittle. It was learned that more than half of that amount has gone to the political consulting and public relations firm of Stoorza, Ziegaus & Metzger.

“They covered all the bases,” a veteran legislative staff member said. “They have Merksamer for the Republicans (Steven A. Merksamer was chief of staff for former Republican Gov. George Deukmejian); Rose and Kindel for the Democrats, and Denny Carpenter for the old-boy network.”

Carpenter is a former state senator from Orange County who is close to legislative leaders in both parties.

“And they’ve got Bobbie Metzger to orchestrate the whole thing,” the staff member said. Metzger, one of Sacramento’s most successful political consultants and public relations specialists, is a former aide to Assembly Speaker Willie Brown (D-San Francisco) and has strong ties to both parties.

“I’ve never seen this magnitude of lobbying on an education issue,” said state Sen. Art Torres (D-Los Angeles), author of legislation that would ban Channel One.

Even some Channel One supporters were startled by the heavy expenditures.

“That’s outrageous,” said Assemblyman Sam Farr (D-Carmel), who has supported Whittle in several legislative battles. “They have a good case to make. I don’t think they need to spend that kind of money.”

Jim Ritts, Whittle’s executive vice president for marketing, said the lobbying is necessary because of strong opposition by state Supt. of Public Instruction Bill Honig and most statewide education organizations.

“We would like to be in the state of California,” Ritts said in a telephone interview from Knoxville. “It’s a big state, an important state, a bellwether state. But there’s a bottleneck there. If it costs $600,000 to move this forward in California, we’ll spend it and we’ll continue to spend it.”

The main “bottleneck” is Honig, who has threatened to reduce state funding for schools that sign up for Channel One and is talking about suing schools that take the program.

“We’re opposed to commercialization of the classroom and we’ll do what we can to keep it from happening,” Honig said.

Maureen DiMarco, Gov. Pete Wilson’s secretary for child development and education, said the governor also opposes Channel One.

Also opposed are the California School Boards Assn., the Assn. of California School Administrators, the California Teachers Assn. and the statewide Parent Teacher Assn., among others.

Ritts said Channel One is in 9,600 junior and senior high schools in 47 states but, because of opposition from Honig and others, only 67 California public schools and 74 private schools have signed up.

Schools get the program free and are provided with a satellite dish, two videocassette recorders and 19-inch television sets for each classroom that shows the program.

Ritts said the cost of installing the equipment averages $50,000 per school.

In return, the school must show the daily 12-minute program in its entirety for three years in all classrooms that have TV sets and must use at least 90% of the programs that are offered.

The programs include brief news and feature stories pegged to a teen-age audience, presented by two youthful anchors. Commercials fill two of the 12 minutes each day.

There have been pitches for soft drinks, candy, cheese snacks, fast-food restaurants, gum and movies intended for teen audiences. Ritts said commercial time costs $150,000 for a 30-second spot.

Channel One supporters say the programs are popular with teachers, parents and students.

“Parents tell us students are talking much more frequently about current affairs than they did before, that they’re much more aware” of news developments, said Larry Lucas, superintendent of ABC Unified School District, which serves Artesia, Cerritos, Hawaiian Gardens, Norwalk, east Lakewood and parts of Long Beach.

“Kids don’t pay much attention to the commercials; they turn around and talk while they’re on,” Lucas said.

He added: “If I had my druthers, I’d rather not have the commercials, but we don’t have a stable funding situation that would enable us to get this kind of equipment and programming.”

Supporters argue that school districts, not the state, should decide whether to subscribe to Channel One.

“I say we should let local school boards debate and decide these things,” Farr said. “Why should we second-guess?”

Opponents contend that Channel One is not subject to the same review that the rest of the school curriculum receives, that it is a crutch for lazy teachers and that other televised materials, without commercials, are available for classroom use.

But their main argument is that selling ads in the classroom is wrong.

Legislation to ban Channel One and other electronic advertising in public schools was introduced this year by Torres and Assemblyman Ted Lempert (D-San Mateo).

The Lempert bill was gutted in the Assembly Education Committee after a display of high-powered lobbying that dazzled the second-term legislator.

“We’re used to having a lot of debate in the Education Committee but we don’t usually see these big-time, high-priced lobbyists,” he said.

The Torres bill passed the Senate but also ran into trouble in the Assembly Education Committee, so Torres decided to hold the bill until next year.

Robert Naylor, former Republican minority leader in the Assembly and the staff member who is handling Channel One for Nielsen, Merksamer, Hodgson, Parrinello & Mueller, said the lobbying campaign has been successful but “it’s been white knuckles most of the way.”

Naylor said the campaign was necessary “because of the heavy lobbying by the other side. . . . I’ll bet the expenditures on the other side are quite a bit larger than Whittle’s bills, but you just can’t break them out” from overall lobbying expenditures by such organizations as the California Teachers Assn. and the school boards association.

Not so, replied Joe Holsinger, Honig’s chief lobbyist.

“Naylor had to have his tongue in his cheek when he made that statement,” Holsinger said. “In this situation, we are definitely David and they are Goliath.”