ZDNET's Rachel King reports that Starbucks is setting up five channels for in-store WiFi customers--including a news network:
The Network will be comprised of five channels: News, Entertainment, Wellness, Business & Careers and My Neighborhood. News options include USA Today, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal. Apple will be handing out free songs via iTunes, and publisher Rodale appears to be the cornerstone of the Health department with content from its various publications including Runner’s World andWomen’s Health.
For those just running in and out of Starbucks for a cup of coffee in the morning, this might not matter as much. For other Starbucks patrons, it’s will be interesting to try out, especially since it’s free! Although it could turn out to be another distraction for anyone trying to get work done on their laptops.
At first glance it doesn't sound like such a big deal. I mean, just an in-store news network? How many people could that reach? Well, according to WikiAnswers, there are more than 11,000 Starbucks in the US, and more than 16,000 worldwide. That's a lot.
Who knows where this is headed? The Cable Gamer got kinda curious about Starbucks' digital strategy when she noticed, in June, that Starbucks was no longer even pretending to charge for WiFi service. Years ago, Starbucks was charging, I recall, 25 cents an hour, or $29.95 a year, for WiFi service. That made a certain amount of sense--after all, Starbucks presumably is interested in selling coffee, and so it wants to turn over its seats. So somebody sitting at a Starbucks for five hours at a time--like yours truly!--didn't sound like a good business plan, unless there were some additional way to monetize the visit, as with metering WiFi. Then Starbucks shifted over to a scheme were so long as you had a $5 minimum on your Starbucks card, WiFi was free. That was surely at most a notional way to charge people, but 'bucks phased even that out in June. In other words, whatever they were doing, they were making it possible for people to spend pretty much all day sitting in a Starbucks. But to what end?
Now we know: Starbucks is getting more and more into showbiz. Not content with promoting albums--including a pretty good one by Paul McCartney--Starbucks is starting to program.
And of course, there's no telling where these Starbucks channels will lead. If Starbucks can come up with a good model, maybe people will want to watch/listen when they're driving their cars, or walking along with their iPod, or at home. And after that--the world!
