1 Whittle Communications L.P., which for months has fought a public relations battle with education leaders, said it has signed 500 schools in 24 states to subscribe to the controversial Channel One news program and its sister programs.
2 Channel One, a satellite-delivered daily program supported by advertising, is scheduled to be launched next March.
3 Whittle said its field staff signed up the 500 schools in 238 school districts after only eight weeks and company executives now expect to reach their start-up goal of 1,000 schools before the end of this year.
4 Christopher Whittle, chairman of the Knoxville, Tenn., media company that is 50% owned by Time Warner Inc., said that by December 1990 he expects to have Channel One installed in about 8,000 schools with a potential audience of six million.
5 Installation of the TV system, which includes providing free 19-inch TV sets in classrooms, begins in January.
6 'What we've done in eight weeks shows we won't have enormous difficulties getting to the place we want to be,' said Mr. Whittle.
7 He said his sales force is signing up schools at the rate of 25 a day.
8 In California and New York, state officials have opposed Channel One.
9 Mr. Whittle said private and parochial schools in both states will be canvassed to see if they are interested in getting the programs.
10 Subscribing schools get the 12-minute daily Channel One news program, whose four 30-second TV ads during each show have drawn protests from educators.
11 Subscribers also get the Classroom Channel, which will feature ad-free educational programming similar to some public-TV shows, and the Educator's Channel, which will offer instructional programming for teachers and school administrators and will be supported by advertising.
12 Whittle has met some resistance.
13 The Educational Network, as Mr. Whittle has named the three programs, has been offered to 1,290 school districts and Whittle continues to negotiate with 919 districts.
14 About 10% of the school districts approached have rejected the network.
15 Mr. Whittle said that so far, three of the six schools that carried the program in a five-week test last spring have subscribed to the program.
16 One of the test schools, Withrow High School in Cincinnati, rejected the project.
17 John Bruner, associate director of communications for Cincinnati Public Schools, said Channel One was rejected because students watching the program didn't fare particularly better on a 28-question current events quiz than a control school without the program and school absences were almost unchanged during the period when the program was being aired.
18 'The number of correct responses was 45% on the test and school absences didn't change much,' said Mr. Bruner. 'The pilot program was received well (by teachers and students), but there wasn't reason enough to sign up.
19 We even invited the public to stop by and see the program, but there wasn't much interest.'
20 Advertisers are showing interest.
21 Last month, Whittle announced it had sold $150 million in advertising time on the network to national advertisers.
22 Mr. Whittle Friday said several more advertisers have been added.
23 Whittle is spending $150 million initially to launch the network.
24 Installation of satellite dishes, TVs and videocassette equipment will cost the company about $20,000 per school, Mr. Whittle said.

Whittle said its field staff signed up the 500 schools in 238 school districts after only eight weeks and company executives now expect to reach their start - up goal of 1 , 000 schools before the end of this year .
executives now expect to reach their start - up
How do executives expect to reach their goal of schools? 