May 20th, 1999
Roy Fox's Testimony on Channel One
By Roy Fox
How Channel One’s TV Commercials Affect Students’ Thinking, Language, and Behavior
I bought some Fila tennis shoes ‘cause I seen ‘em on a commercial. I mean, they had this basketball player, but I don’t know who he was… he was jumping. Anyway, the shoes have like, little flaps on the sides of ‘em, like little wings. They’re velcro… anyway, they come off, and they started flying (giggles). They flew off of the building, so I had to have them shoes!
--Monica, high school senior
Testimony Prepared for Labor and Human Resources CommitteeUnited States Senate, Washington, D.C.
Roy F. Fox, Associate Professor of English Education & LiteracyUniversity of Missouri-Columbia478 McReynolds Hall, Columbia, MO. 65211Ph.: (573) 882-4768; E-Mail:
OVERVIEW
Since 1992, I have studied Channel One’s presence in public schools, focusing most of my work on the effects that mandated TV commercials have on students’ thinking, language, and behavior (including consumer behavior). Between 1993 and 1995, I conducted extensive taped interviews with over 200 students in grades 9-12 enrolled in two Missouri schools (90% were ninth-graders, because all students take this course). Interviews occurred in small groups as well as one-to-one. Students were interviewed in a room removed from their teacher and other classmates. Some students were interviewed several times, occasionally while watching commercials, stopping the tape to talk about certain points, etc. Other sources of data included field notes, observations, and student artifacts.
This material resulted in over 500 pages of typed notes and transcripts. My primary research questions were as follows: How well do kids know commercials? How do kids think about commercials? How do commercials affect kids’ language? How do commercials affect kids’ behavior? Their consumer behavior? How is the required watching of TV commercials best characterized in this context? This project was completed independently, with no grant assistance from any organization. It is important to note here that this methodology, while time-consuming, is the most appropriate and effective for evaluating students’ thinking, language, and behavior.
Following are summaries of selected results and conclusions. If you would like additional information, the entire report is available as, Harvesting Minds, by Roy F. Fox, Westport, CT.: Praeger Press, 1996, 211 pages.
SUMMARY OF SELECTED RESULTS
1. How well do kids know commercials played on Channel One?
Extraordinarily well. Students demonstrated an extremely high command of details related to 1) people and places depicted in ads; 2) brand names and products; 3) product packaging; 4) the structure of commercials, and 4) relationships among commercials and products Examples: one ad, in about 1-2 seconds, shows a couple seated on an airplane. Months after this ad had stopped airing, students recalled that the plane’s seats werered with little blue squares that have arrows sticking out of them. Students recalled the female passenger asbeing about 65 years old, has gray, curly short hair that’s a little frizzy...partly dyed a reddish color. She wears brown, plastic glasses that have arms that curve down...a white, short-sleeved Granny dress with blue and pink flowers...clip-on, gaudy earrings and a bead necklace, which has a large centerpiece.... Students reported viewing the same commercial (e.g., Michael Jordan’sBe Like Mike ad) over and over, for a period of several months.
2. How do kids respond to Channel One’s commercials?
Most kids, most of the time, could not resist doing or saying something in response to these TV commercials. Responses ranged from vigorous physical actions, to passive uses of an ad’s language. These behaviors mainly serve to benefit the products; that is, in physically acting out an ad or by verbalizing it in its original or altered form, students deeply internalize the commercial messages. Here is a sampling of the types of behaviors associated with commercials:
1) Studentstook over or assumed the identities of people they viewed on TV commercials. Example: Student Judson Wells called himselfShaq Wells and signed his name this way in his peers’ yearbooks. Also, When answering a question from me, some students automaticallyswitched person orswitched viewpoints with a character from a commercial, leaping immediately into the persona of an ad character, with no transition or explanation. Example: When I asked Bryan what the new Gatorade commercial was about, he immediately responded with,And the best part is, you get to go there and watch me! Theme in Bryan’s reply is actuallyChuckie V., the character in the ad.
2) Students associated or linked, almost instantly, one commercial with another. Over and over during my conversations with kids, a word, phrase, or image from one commercial quickly set off chains of associations--quick links to other ads. Example: a group of students read a printed transcript of a Head and Shoulders Shampoo commercial, in which one boy stated,Give me a break. Next, when I asked students what this ad was selling, one boy joked,Kit Kat Candy bars, instantly linking the printed phrase to the musical jingle from the candy commercials.
3) Studentsmirrored or repeated--verbatim--exact lines of dialogue, songs, vocal inflections, and actions from commercials. When students parrot language, songs, or actions, it indicates involvement with the commercial, but very little autonomous thinking. In fact, mirroring merely repeats all or parts of an ad’s message. Example: One day I opened an interview with a small group of students by asking,What’s advertised on Channel One?Cinnaburst, replied Eric.You know--it’s that gum that has these little red things, and--No! interrupted Lisa, who sat across the table,those are flavor crystals. Eric paused, muttering,Oh, yeah, flavor crystals.... and quickly continued. When Lisa corrected her classmate with the ad’s exact wording, the other students nodded in agreement. To them, nothing unusual had occurred. Lisa’s mirroring of the exact phrase (and her insistence that others do so, too) seemed perfectly normal.
4) Students substituted a commercial’s language for the actual item or practice in question. Example: One student said,Sometimes, if I’m sitting at home and I’m hungry and like, a Taco Bell commercial comes on, I’ll go out and get some Taco Bell. Here, the brand name becomes identical to the generic item it labels, food. Example: After one discussion of a Little Caesar’s Pizza commercial became sidetracked, I asked,Now--where were we? A boy answered,We were talking about the cheesy--uh, the Little Caesar’s commercial. The word,cheesy is emphasized in the Little Caesar’s ad campaign.
5) Most students in this study saw commercials as having no author, no creator. During discussions, about 150 students viewed one of Pepsi’sIt’s Like This commercials. I asked them,Whose point of view is being communicated in this commercial--if anyone’s? andWho is telling the story in this commercial? Students invariably replied that the ad’s point of view came from its characters--those people who were on camera the longest period of time and who were the most active. Only five students indicated that the viewpoint of the ad was that of the Pepsi Corporation or its marketer or its commercial producers, directors, and editors. Kids saw no human being behind the message, no mediator calling the shots from the outside.
In short, students did not view commercials as means to make a profit. This stance is illustrated in students’ explanations of why star athletes make commercials. One typical group brain stormed all the possible ways they could think of. They came up with the following reasons: 1) Because it motivates them to play better. 2) Because it’s a reward for doing excellent work. 3) Because it helps their team. 4) Because it elevates their status and reputation among peers. 5) Because athletes aresponsored by different companies. In short, students tended to view commercials starring athletes as advertisements for the athlete, not for the product!
6) Studentsblurred commercials with regular programs, with news programs, and with public service announcements. Pepsi’sIt’s Like This commercials--crafted to look like public service announcements--intersperse a few close-up shots of colorful Pepsi cans between black and white scenes of kids talking to someone off camera. In one day, I talked to 29 students about this ad and only 12 thought it was a commercial, while six thought it was both a news item and a commercial. Four students considered it purely news, while seven students didn’t know how to define it. Most students insisted thatreal kids like us appeared in the ad because, as one girl emphasized,It just feels real! One boy thoughtfully concluded,It’s not really a commercial—it’s just a commercial sponsored by Pepsi.
3. How do Channel One’s commercials affect kids’ behavior?
1) Studentsreplay commercials. To create replays, kids can verbally imitate ads, physically act them out, or re-experience them when they dream. Images, music, language, objects, and nonverbal communication--together or separately--are used to create replays of commercials. In addition to the actual commercials airing multiple times during the daily Channel One broadcasts, replays of ad messages by kids create a virtualecho chamber of commercial messages.
Kids engaged in replays in many ways, though I will note only a few of them here: 1) adopting jargon and brand names; 2) playing backyard games; 3) choosing clothes and objects; 4) eating packaging; 5) entering contests; 6) cheering at sports events; 7) creating art projects, and 8) dreaming. Example: Many students told me about a recent football game where the home team students in the bleachers chanted in unison,Got to be, got to be, Dom-in-os! This scene directly echoed a Domino’s commercial playing on Channel One at the time, in which football fans chant the same line.
Example: One school’s art teacher asked students to create self-portraits through the use of sculpture. One boy created a small man which looked exactly like the mustachioed cartoon character portrayed on the Pringle’s Potato Chips can, a product which was heavily advertised on Channel One. This character did not resemble the student artist at all. Even with small details, the student copied (replayed) the can: the student’s eyes were green, but he made his sculpture’s eyes black, like those on the can. The student’s sculpture even holds a tiny tray, with an ever-so-tiny can of Pringles chips on it. For this assignment, the student’s self-portrait turned out to be a three-dimensional replay of the Pringles product. Other art projects also replayed ad messages, such as one girl’s assignedsurrealist collage, which merely replayed theEnergizer Bunny commercial, which was running on Channel One as well as network television.
Example: Several students described dreams they had about Channel One’s commercials. In these dreams, the students made commercials and/or starred in them. All of the dreams I investigated featured the products (advertised on Channel One) in some important way.
Example: Eating gum wrappers was the most curious form of replay I found during this study. Out of the 13 students I talked to about this, nine of them reported regularly consuming the inner, tissue-paper wrapping on sticks of Mintaburst or Cinnaburst gum. One girl told me she had eaten about 40 wrappers. While this is hard to explain, my best guess is that it stems from the gum commercials themselves, which portray a group of very nervous parents sitting around in a psychiatrist’s office, forming asupport group. Each proclaims vehemently that his or her childwould never do this! (i.e., eat that brand of gum). In short, the ad satirized nervous parents who equatethe gum with hard drugs. When students ate the wrappers, they were merely pushing the idea of illegal consumption one step further and likely relished the absurdity. Nonetheless, they were also replaying the ad’s central message.
4. How do Channel One’s commercials affect students’ consumer behavior?
Throughout this study, I was surprised at the number of students who, like Monica, quoted at the beginning of this report, told me they had purchased an item they had seen on one specific Channel One commercial. The number averaged from one-third to one-half of the students in each small group. These students could describe the exact commercial they saw, why or how they were attracted by the ad and/or product, how much time passed before purchasing it, and how they bought it. Example: One diminutive boy enlisted the help of his grandmother in saving up $160 to purchase Michael Jordan Nike basketball shoes. When I asked why, he drawled matter-of-factly,Saw ‘em on a c’mersh’l. This was a large expense for this family. Also, this student is quite short in height and does not play basketball.
I was also surprised to discover that one of the schools I visited actually sold the following products which were currently advertised on Channel One: Twix, M&Ms, Pepsi, Crystal Clear Pepsi, Starburst, Snickers, Mountain Dew, Ocean Spray cranberry juice, and several others. One student explained to me how her first-hour teacher allowed students to take a snack break immediately after viewing the Channel One broadcast. That morning, she had bought M&Ms immediately after viewing the M&Ms commercial. The full report describes categories of students who were drawn to specific values and ideologies in ads. Example: The daredevil, ragamuffin boys who starred in a series of Mountain Dew commercials (“Been there, done that) especially appealed to male students who valued the soft-drink’s high caffeine content, associating it with increased action and adventure.
SELECTED CONCLUSIONS
Over this two-year period, I concluded each interview by asking a final question:Is there anything else about commercials that we have not talked about, but should? Yes! they vigorously replied, time and again.We need new commercials! Showing students many commercials every day for months and years, repeating certain ads endlessly, induces in them a need for new commercials--a desire for more. In these classrooms, simple operant conditioning thrives.
Classic propaganda techniques (repetition, testimonials, association, music, and hi-tech imagery) work best inclosed environments, where outside stimuli cannot interfere with the intended messages--exactly the situation advertisers have in classrooms. Students are not allowed to talk, to mute the ads, to leave the room. In every way, students are a captive audience. Long ago, the reason for setting up public schools in the first place was to ensure a free marketplace of ideas--not products. Daily, Channel One delivers thousands of students to advertisers (inunits per thousand), to the highest bidder. How can these students possibly erase the high-voltage, laser-laced images, each frame meticulously crafted to sell glitzy running shoes?
Our internal images and language create our sense of selfhood--the most fragile, valuable quality we’ll ever own. Private, vulnerable and sacred, a human’s psyche--especially a child’s psyche--is not a commodity to be sold. Yet such commerce will continue until we ban TV commercials from our schools.
Roy F. FoxUniversity of Missouri-Columbia