Captive Audience: Advertising Invades the Classroom

I watched a very interesting film the other day entitled Captive Audience: Advertising Invades the Classroom. It originally came out in 2003 from Media Education Foundation, but it's quite good and still very relevant. By way of brief summary:

For marketers who wish to reach the lucrative youth market, the relatively uncluttered medium of the school environment represents the final frontier -- access to a captive audience of millions of students. Meanwhile dwindling federal, state, and local funding for education has left many schools vulnerable to the advertiser's pitch. As a result, commercialism has steadily increased in America's public schools in recent years, often with little or no public awareness.

If you'd like the TAKE ACTION and watch the film, be aware that it can be difficult to get a hold of, in that it is not sold to the public, but only to institutions (at prices the average Joe or Joanne can't afford). But, sometimes local video stores that specialize in documentaries may have it. (For example, in Chicago, Facets Multimedia often has hard to find material.) Another option is that many colleges and universities have the video in their circulating collection for card holders. So find a university faculty, staff, or student, and hop to.

But, by way of a sample, here's the trailer: