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American Morning
Minding Your Business: Wal-Mart Tunes Up
Aired November 13, 2003 - 07:54 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Watch out Napster and Apple iTunes, here comes Wal-Mart?
Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business." Good morning.
SERWER: Good morning. Yes.
O'BRIEN: I'm surprised.
SERWER: Well, it's not really that surprising if you think about it, Soledad, because if someone's got a good business out there that's pretty big, chances are Wal-Mart's going to get into it. We're finding out this morning, their news report is saying Wal-Mart is getting into the online music business as early as next week. They're going to be rolling out something at their Web site, about 200,000 songs to start, which is kind of modest. But they're going to be guess what? Underpricing the competition. You know how Apple and the rest of them are charging about 99 cents a song. Wal-Mart is going to be less. Also a lot of country tunes at the Wal-Mart site, kind of maybe appealing to their customer base a little bit.
O'BRIEN: How much are they going to charge? Do we know yet?
SERWER: We don't know that quite yet.
Some other Wal-Mart news, though, this morning. And, you know, this one, of course, we saw this coming a mile away. And it is the "Playboy" pictorial women of Wal-Mart is coming out. And what can you say? There they are. Those are the pictures we will show on this family cable network.
And an interesting thing here, though. It's not going to be an issue of the magazine. It's only online, and I guess they're just trying to boost their online business. No real reason given by the company why they're doing it that way. Watch out for falling prices.
But what's interesting, of course, is "Playboy" is not for sale in Wal-Marts, never has been. I'm going to tell you where some of these women are from. I'm not going to tell you their names, although you can find out on the Web site: New Albany, Indiana; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Lancaster California; Bozeman, Montana; Sterling, Illinois; and Bridgeview, Illinois. So, there's women in those Wal- Marts who have posed for this pictorial.
O'BRIEN: That would be just tragic if people took that information and then went to those Wal-Marts to see if they could meet some of those women. BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Tragic?
SERWER: All right.
(CROSSTALK)
SERWER: I hope that wouldn't happen.
O'BRIEN: Let's talk about the markets. What happened yesterday?
SERWER: Yes, a beautiful day yesterday. Stocks were up across the board, Dow up over 100 points there. We kind of got even better as the day went on.
Big news yesterday was the CEOs of IBM and GE, both saying that business was improving. And, of course, that's wonderful stuff. The futures this morning looking kind of flat, though.
O'BRIEN: Andy, thank you very much.
SERWER: You're welcome.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
Aired November 13, 2003 - 07:54 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Watch out Napster and Apple iTunes, here comes Wal-Mart?
Andy Serwer is "Minding Your Business." Good morning.
SERWER: Good morning. Yes.
O'BRIEN: I'm surprised.
SERWER: Well, it's not really that surprising if you think about it, Soledad, because if someone's got a good business out there that's pretty big, chances are Wal-Mart's going to get into it. We're finding out this morning, their news report is saying Wal-Mart is getting into the online music business as early as next week. They're going to be rolling out something at their Web site, about 200,000 songs to start, which is kind of modest. But they're going to be guess what? Underpricing the competition. You know how Apple and the rest of them are charging about 99 cents a song. Wal-Mart is going to be less. Also a lot of country tunes at the Wal-Mart site, kind of maybe appealing to their customer base a little bit.
O'BRIEN: How much are they going to charge? Do we know yet?
SERWER: We don't know that quite yet.
Some other Wal-Mart news, though, this morning. And, you know, this one, of course, we saw this coming a mile away. And it is the "Playboy" pictorial women of Wal-Mart is coming out. And what can you say? There they are. Those are the pictures we will show on this family cable network.
And an interesting thing here, though. It's not going to be an issue of the magazine. It's only online, and I guess they're just trying to boost their online business. No real reason given by the company why they're doing it that way. Watch out for falling prices.
But what's interesting, of course, is "Playboy" is not for sale in Wal-Marts, never has been. I'm going to tell you where some of these women are from. I'm not going to tell you their names, although you can find out on the Web site: New Albany, Indiana; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Lancaster California; Bozeman, Montana; Sterling, Illinois; and Bridgeview, Illinois. So, there's women in those Wal- Marts who have posed for this pictorial.
O'BRIEN: That would be just tragic if people took that information and then went to those Wal-Marts to see if they could meet some of those women. BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Tragic?
SERWER: All right.
(CROSSTALK)
SERWER: I hope that wouldn't happen.
O'BRIEN: Let's talk about the markets. What happened yesterday?
SERWER: Yes, a beautiful day yesterday. Stocks were up across the board, Dow up over 100 points there. We kind of got even better as the day went on.
Big news yesterday was the CEOs of IBM and GE, both saying that business was improving. And, of course, that's wonderful stuff. The futures this morning looking kind of flat, though.
O'BRIEN: Andy, thank you very much.
SERWER: You're welcome.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
