• by July 8, 2004

America Online is hitting middle America where it shops--Wal-Mart.

The online media company has a new deal with Wal-Mart stores nationwide to air concerts from its Broadband Rocks concert series. The series kicked off July 2 with an Avril Lavigne concert, which was broadcast in more than 2,600 stores and more than 100,000 screens via the Wal-Mart Television Network. Wal-Mart said it will air the concert events on select Friday nights through the end of the year. AOL taped the Lavigne concert in New York in late May. It was set to tape Josh Groban in Los Angeles this weekend.

Broadband Rocks is part of the AOL Music channel, and is one of several branded properties AOL is touting in the bid to lure consumers to its AOL for Broadband service. The co-promotion of AOL for Broadband in Wal-Mart stores helped boost store sales of the Canadian pixie's new album Under My Skin 5 percent. "AOL has been instrumental in Avril's success, with the initial broadcast on AOL for Broadband serving as one of the catalysts for the number one debut of Under My Skin," said Kevin Twitchell, senior vice president of sales for RCA Music Group, in a statement. "Making this fantastic concert available to millions of Wal-Mart consumers is a great way to keep the momentum going."

AOL has 24 million subscribers. It also lost 2.2 million subscribers last year, but appeared to be turning the corner; the company added 600,000 new broadband customers in the first quarter of this year. AOL has steadily been adding new premium content and services that it hopes will convince consumers on narrowband price plans to migrate to its broadband offerings. The company has dangled numerous promotions, sample content offers, and "look/see" invitations to show off its new content and look. AOL offered the Lavigne concert for free in order to tout its broadband package.

AOL is also attempting to open its walled garden by encouraging frequent visitors to its large gateways, including Netscape, AOL.com, and CompuServe, for starters, to sample broadband content for a better online experience. With millions of visitors to these gateways each day, AOL has an opportunity to aggregate these audiences and migrate them to hot destinations on the service.