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Officially Sponsored by Starbucks: MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe’

Host of MSNBC’s Morning Joe show, Joe Scarborough, drinks Starbucks products on camera so often that viewers couldn’t help but wonder whether it was a form of paid product placement. It wasn’t - Scarborough just happens to like Frappuccinos - until now. Beginning this week, MSNBC’s Morning Joe show will be officially sponsored by Starbucks.

The integration between Starbucks and Morning Joe is the closest between an advertiser and a national news program in recent memory, perhaps since the 1950s, when an NBC news roundup, the Camel News Caravan, was sponsored by the cigarette manufacturer, according to The New York Times.

For the Starbucks/Morning Joe integration, voice-overs will announce that Morning Joe is “brewed by Starbucks.” A new logo for the show incorporates Starbucks, as well.

A source close to the deal says Starbucks is likely paying upwards of $10 million to MSNBC.

Starbucks posted its first-ever fiscal loss in August 2008 and has financially struggled since. It continued its slump in the second quarter of its fiscal year 2009. During the second quarter ended March 29, 2009, Starbucks reported consolidated net revenues of $2.3 billion, a 7.6% decrease from Q2 2008, primarily due to an 8% decrease in comparable store sales, which in turn was caused by a 5% decline in customer transactions and 3% decline in average transaction value.