OAK BROOK, Ill. -- McDonald's Corp. is piloting the "M Channel," a custom TV channel at 700 McDonald's restaurants, reported the Associated Press.
The channel's aim is to offer exclusive content to entertain customers, as well as to create promotional and sales opportunities for record companies and others who want to take advantage of McDonald's customer pool.
Lee Edmondson, who has spent more than eight years developing the concept for McDonald's, said the fast-food chain is thinking way outside the TV box.
"It is a vision that is more than television," more than the "passive relationship" that viewers have with gas station or supermarket TV feeds, he told the news agency. He comes from a venture-capital background.
The M channel is similar to a broadcast network with its own news, entertainment and sportscasts localized for cities and even neighborhoods, he said. But it will "supersize" the experience by directing viewers online for shopping or other opportunities, said the report.
M Channel's goal is to target different audiences at different times of day and be so area-specific that a restaurant could show high school football game highlights to hometown fans, Edmondson added. Local station anchors will tape news reports for the channel, AP said.
Among those who have enlisted as content providers are producer Mark Burnett (Survivor, The Voice), ReelzChannel and broadcast stations. A range of advertisers, minus other restaurants and perhaps alcoholic beverages, will be welcome, Edmondson said.
For now, the programming is in its infancy, the report said.
The pilot project, which began testing in scattered Western outlets two years ago, recently completed expansion to all McDonald's California outlets from San Diego north to Bakersfield. All told, the eateries get nearly 15 million monthly visits from adult customers alone.
M Channel could expand to the roughly 14,000 McDonald's nationwide within 18 months of getting the "go" from the company and franchisees, Edmondson said. He declined to predict when the green light could come for the project that has advanced with caution, the chain's approach to making changes.
The end game Edmonson foresees: Versions of the channel in McDonald's worldwide, and perhaps the birth of a template for other industries. So far, the investor-funded M Channel has consumed tens of millions of dollars and it "will be that again to pull it off," he said, declining to give an exact figure.
The M Channel is "a smart thing to do," Valerie Folkes, a marketing professor at the University of Southern California's Marshall School of Business, told AP.
TV sets, which originally sprouted in auto service shops and elsewhere to keep customers distracted while cooling their heels, have new potential in a splintered media market, said the report.
"Advertisers face difficulties not only in reaching the right people but also in capturing their attention," Folkes said. "Here they have people who they know are customers and who are more inclined to listen to their message."
How will Oak Brook, Ill.-based McDonald's judge M Channel's value?
"Ad revenues are important, but the channel must be positively received by our customers in order to be viewed as a success," Brad Hunter, senior marketing director for McDonald's USA, told the news agency.
Philip Palumbo, who owns 11 McDonald's in San Diego County and is the marketing co-op head for the county's outlets, has seen an immediate benefit from the pilot project: No more complaints to workers about the network fare his customers saw via satellite.
"The content was not necessarily appropriate," Palumbo told AP. "The big things were politics. Others were violence, usually on the news, or medical stuff like showing surgery."
Said Folkes: "You can imagine a news story about 'pink slime' is not going to make a McDonald's customer eager to eat that Big Mac."
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