As if Channel One, which force-feeds kids adverts masquerading as infotainment over a closed-circuit TV system hard-wired into schools, wasn’t bad enough. BusRadio hits the children up with ad-patter on their way to and from school. And since the kids most likely to be found on a school bus skew younger than Channel One’s target demographic, one might say BusRadio softens students up for later Channel One exposure (the companies are not linked in any way that I can tell, except for the exploitation fetish, born from BusRadio founders’ earlier success in this regard).
Details on the BusRadio web site are scant – there’s no explanation of just how it will beam its programming into school buses. Part of the business model apparently revolves around driving kids to web sites where marketing research under the guise of “interactive entertainment” will be conducted.
BusRadio says it will launch in Massachusetts later this year and should initially reach more than 100,000 kids in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Boston. Within 12 months it expects a nationwide “captive audience” ten times the size.
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