Cable Networks Talk Starbucks On Company’s 40th Anniversary

Yesterday, coffee chain Starbucks celebrated its 40th anniversary, and it got plenty of play on the cable news channels.

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe”–which is “brewed by Starbucks” every morning– had a live interview with CEO Howard Schultz:

That interview caught the attention of Ad Age, which wrote about the apparent conflict of interest. Our sister blog PRNewser also weighed in on the perception issue it raises:

There are plenty of brands out there who have anniversaries coming up and would love to have a seven-minute commercial – I mean segment – with Joe and Mika. Some of these anniversaries, like Starbucks, are newsworthy. Heck, some of these CEOs might even allow difficult questions.

Meanwhile, CNN and Fox News Channel largely ignored the anniversary.

The business networks, on the other hand, were all over it.

Fox Business Network was all over the anniversary, with Liz Claman reporting from inside Starbucks headquarters in Seattle:

CNBC covered the anniversary throughout the day, but did not speak to Schultz, though it did re-air a biography of the CEO.