Stop Advertising to Captive Children on School Buses

Oh goodness. Now even school buses won’t be safe from advertising targeting kids — even children as young as five. 

Indeed, as The Washington Post recently reported, a new company, BusRadio, plans to pipe a private radio network into school buses around the country. The network would play music, public-service announcements, contests and, of course, ads, aimed targeting kids while they travel to and from school.

BusRadio has big plans to infiltrate kids’ minds with advertising messages. The company plans a pilot project in September in Massachusetts, and in September 2007, it hopes to reach 1 million children.

BusRadio’s website (http://www.busradio.net/) is rather vocal about its goals to reach unsuspecting, captive children’s audiences:

“Every morning and every afternoon on their way to and from school, kids across the country will be listening to the dynamic programming of BusRadio providing advertiser’s [sic] with a unique and effective way to reach the highly sought after teen and tween market.”

Rightfully, consumer groups such as Commercial Alert are up in arms ab out this. That consumer group complained that:

• "It is wrong to force captive audiences of children to listen to advertising."
• "Schools shouldn’t discourage children from doing homework on school buses."

Commercial Alert is now urging upset concerned people to "stop the salesmen before they board the bus." Just click here to urge the managing partners of Sigma & Partners not to invest in BusRadio or any company that forces kids listen to advertising.

Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood even sent a letter to all 346 Massachusetts superintendents urging them not to sign up their districts for BusRadio.

“In essence, BusRadio programming will consist of non-stop advertising in one form or another, from which children will have no escape,” said CCFC’s Dr. Susan Linn, author of Consuming Kids.

"We hope that school communities will protect the health and well-being of their students by saying no to BusRadio." 

“Their lives are already saturated with marketing.  It’s essential that we work together to stop this latest escalation in the commercial assault on children.”

Please join the fight against BusRadio. A company should not be allowed to hit innocent kids with ads promoting junk food and sweets!