Wal-Mart Canada deploying digital signage

According to this article in the Globe and Mail, a company called ShopCast (whose website I am totally unable to find and/or doesn't work) just closed a digital signage deal with Wal-Mart Canada, ending months of speculation that the Canadian arm of the giant retailer would get with the in-store media program. The network will launch in November at 3 Wal-Mart Supercenters, initially only as a checkout channel. From the article:

Each store will have 15 to 20 screens at the checkouts and in high-traffic sections such as fashion, groceries and electronics. The monitors at the checkouts will be smaller — 32 inches — and carry more in-depth information. That's because shoppers will be standing still at the checkout, while they tend to just glance at the screen when they're browsing the store.

Commercials will be 10 to 15 seconds each, shorter than the 15- to 30-second spots on conventional television, he said.

My favorite part of the article: use of the phrase "paradigm-shift." Unless Canada has special paradigms that I don't quite understand, Wal-Mart US has been doing in-store TV with PRN for close to a decade now, and Wal-Mart Mexico has had digital signage deployed for about a year in some stores, so I'm not sure how anything has been shifted.

[UPDATE] I need to start reading all of my news at once. Media in Canada has some additional details:

Initially ShopCast will be operating only a checkout channel at the Supercentre cash desks, with a full-scale rollout planned for Jan. 24 involving 10 Ontario stores and nine individually-programmed channels keyed to departments, such as fashion, pantry, pharma, health and beauty, electronics, etc. It is with the January expansion that ShopCast is offering national advertisers access to buy into the first year of the network (Jan. to Sept.), and to participate in roll-out research. Ultimately, there will be the opportunity to buy by demo or daypart and to geo-target. The checkout channel will have a cost per thousand somewhere between $4-5, and within the store, channels will be priced on a per store, per cycle basis (in two-week cycles). Wal-Mart traffic clocks in at one million shoppers per day.

So there you have it.