It's Not My Place (In The 9 To 5 World)

Did your high school have Channel 1? My high school had Channel 1.
Rob Thomas worked for Channel 1.*
He wrote a book called Satellite Down about a kid named Patrick Sheridan whose high school has Classroom Direct.
(Other things Rob Thomas has written: a YA novel called Rats Saw God [flashback!], Veronica Mars, Drive Me Crazy**.)
If your school didn't have Channel 1, and right now you're trying to figure out what the hell I'm talking about (more so than usual), here you go. Basically, it's a news show geared towards teenagers, shown in classrooms. It has A LOT of ads. All for stereotypically teenagery things. I remember a lot of pop and gum commercials, myself. And a really annoying one about studying abroad with the B-52s song "Roam" in it. In exchange for a captive audience to advertise to, schools get tvs in every room with a close-circuit-thingy, that they can theoretically use to broadcast stuff on their own.
Mostly what I remember about Channel 1 was everyone ignoring it. Homeroom is fuckin' early, most people are talking, etc. I always wondered what one extra subliminal Pepsi/Coke (see? I don't remember. I'm going to assume Pepsi, based on their irritating mid90s "Coke is for old people" pitch.) or Big Red (I remember this b/c I've always wondered what's so breath-freshening about cinnamon) would really change about everyone's consumption, and how much the ad rate would change if execs knew how little attention was being paid.
You know, when I didn't think the whole thing was the scum of the earth and terrifically offensive. I believe I've mentioned before that I went through my humorless feminist phase around 9th-10th grade?
I have 2 programming memories of Channel 1.

1. Being asked if the band they were talking about was the same one on my shirt the Monday after Kurt Cobain killed himself. (Yes, I wore the shirt then. Shut up.)
   
2. A couple of the Ramones guest-hosted one morning. Boy, if you want crap guest-hosts of a news show, pick some Ramones. Their cue card reading was OBVIOUS and HILARIOUS. And momentarily distracted me from the fact that I was the only one in the building who knew who they were. This is not an exaggeration.

Now that I think about it, maybe the huge advertising rates were justified. I mean, I almost always had my nose in a book/my journal, attempting to let the black coffee work its magic (you're getting a great picture of the kind of teen I was, aren't you?), but I can distinctly remember that damn Big Red commercial. People were, like, kissing. And smelling all cinnamony, I'm assuming. Which is, as I mentioned already, gross. And there was a UFO.

Obligatory "It's a Review! I Swear" Comment: Patrick's kind of a dumbass. And just when you thought he's learned to be less of a dumbass, he's pulls the world's biggest feat of dumbassery. I mean, I get not being able to say to Channel 1 head honcho-guy, No one watches, or, I hate this stupid hat, but the whole--SPOILER! SPOILER!--insinuating he slept with a female friend to her jackass crush to, what? save her from said jackass crush? I don't get it. I did enjoy the trip down Channel 1 Memory Lane, though.

*Not the Matchbox 20 guy.
**Which is actually based on a novel by a guy named Todd Strasser, which I didn't think was as good as the movie, but then, reading didn't involve staring at Adrian Grenier. Who I sometimes confuse with Rory Cochrane. Wait! They were both in The Adventures of Sebastian Cole!? Man, I get so easily distracted by IMDB.