McDonalds Launches TV Channel.

McDonalds is about to roll out their own TV channel produced specifically for TVs that will be hung inside their restaurants.

People coming in for a quick bite will now be subjected to a barrage of advertisements courtesy McTV. McDonalds is starting to mount dozens of flat screen TVs all over their stores that will play a special programming mix of entertainment and advertisements. Audio will be pumped through speakers around the dining room and customers in 70% of the restaurant will be constantly experiencing the programming during their visit.

Since they can’t just show a constant stream of advertisements on McTV without driving all their customers insane, McDonalds is putting together stealthy propaganda reports to help push their brand. These reports will be about the lives of “real” working moms and superstar high school athletes. We can only assume that what makes these moms so great and these athlete so athletic is their steady diets of McDonalds.

McTV is an advertiser’s dream. The channel will be seen by 18 to 20 million people every month giving the restaurant chain one of the largest daytime TV audiences around. McDonalds can profit off the ad space and keep people in the restaurant longer to help their transition back from being mostly drive-through to a dining “destination.”

The current head of McDonalds’s brand management spoke ominously about McTV’s “captive audience” when he told the LA Times, “While their in line getting their hamburger, there is no escape.” There is one way to escape though, not going to McDonalds in the first place.

[pic: Fred Prouser/Reuters]