NEWS RELEASE
For More Information Contact: Jonathan Rowe and Gary Ruskin (202) 387-8030
For Immediate Release: June 5th, 2006
Commercial Alert Urges Gov. Romney to Expel Radio Ads from Mass. School Buses
The Washington Post reported yesterday that a new company, BusRadio, plans to install special radio equipment in school buses as a way to target corporate advertising at captive audiences of school children. The company’s first pilot project is in Massachusetts, and its ads will reach more than 100,000 Massachusetts children starting in September, including children as young as five.
In response, Commercial Alert sent a letter today to Massachusetts Governor Mitt Romney, urging him to stop BusRadio from using the state’s compulsory school laws to deliver a captive audience of school children into the arms of the advertising industry.
Dear Governor Romney:
Every day, the parents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts entrust their children to you for the purpose of education. On no other matter is your duty as an elected official so constant and direct. It is one thing to maintain the roads and sewers. It is quite another for parents to send their children to the public schools – which means, ultimately to you—as the law requires them to do.
The compulsory school laws exist for one reason: education and the building of character. That purpose, which most parents share, is the basis of the widespread consent to these laws. Public education in Massachusetts is a public trust. As governor, your job is to make absolutely sure that there is no abuse of the trust that parents put in the schools and in yourself.
That trust has been threatened in recent years, as commercial forces have attempted to seize upon the schools for their own ends. These forces are trying to turn the compulsory school laws into a means of corralling a captive audience of impressionable children, for commercial gain. First it was Channel One, which brought television advertising into school classrooms in the guise of a daily “news” show. Now it’s BusRadio, which literally is going to turn school buses into a means to deliver the captive ears of children to corporate advertisers.
BusRadio has proposed to install its equipment on school buses throughout the Commonwealth. Beginning this September, the company plans to subject over 100,000 Massachusetts schoolchildren to its advertising scheme. The company says it plans to target children in elementary school, which means children as young as five.
Children would have to listen to music, service spots, and eight minutes of commercial advertising per hour. They would have no choice, and neither would their parents. The compulsory school laws would become a pretext for compulsory listening to commercial propaganda. In addition, you would be intentionally interfering with the ability of students’ to read, pray or do homework on the school bus.
The people behind BusRadio do not portray themselves that way of course. They talk about safety, “age appropriate” music and DJ talk, among other things. It is pretty clear they have done their market research, and know what parents and school administrators want to hear. The company’s pitch to potential advertisers is more candid. “BusRadio will take targeted student marketing to the next level,” it enthuses. Advertisers will get “a unique and effective way to reach the highly sought after teen and tween market.”
BusRadio has boasted that the ads for one movie it pushed at kids “received recall rates in the 90% range” – that is, over 90% of school children remembered the advertising.
Is this what the schools of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts are for – to “take targeted student marketing to the next level” and boost “recall rates” for ads targeting children as young as five? Is it the purpose of the compulsory school laws to provide a “unique and effective way” for corporate advertisers to bypass parents and speak directly to kids in a captive setting? Is this the model of education that you stand for and want to hold out to the nation?
We know that it is not easy to stand up to commercial forces in this nation. They want to insinuate themselves into everything, especially when it comes to kids. But just as we teach our children to say “no,” so leaders have to say “no” too, even when it is inconvenient. Education is about character. It is not about enabling the commercial seduction of the kids entrusted to the schools, however beguiling the package in which that seduction is wrapped.
This is an opportunity for you to set an example of moral principle for the whole nation. BusRadio is knocking on the door. Just say no. Expel them from every school bus in Massachusetts.
Sincerely,
Jonathan Rowe, Issues Director
Gary Ruskin, Executive Director
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Commercial Alert is a national nonprofit organization that opposes advertising and commercialism in schools. Our mission is to keep the commercial culture within its proper sphere, and to prevent it from exploiting children and subverting the higher values of family, community, environmental integrity and democracy. For more information, see our website at: http://www.commercialalert.org.
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