Philadelphia Media Network Offers First Android Tablet Bundled with News Content in Pilot Program

As Old Media continues to try to come to grips with New Media and all that the digital world means or will mean there are bound to be some endeavors launched like this pilot program from the Philadelphia Media Network.

Essentially this is an Android Tablet bundled up with content from three digital publications on from that network. Don’t think this is one of those subscribe and get the tablet free deals. Also don’t think that because you purchase the tablet you get the content for free. The base Tablet sells for $99 but only if you spring for $9.99 contract for two years. Or if you want only go in for a year the price will be $129 and the content will be $12.99 a month.

The Tablet in question is the Archos Arnova 10 G2 that normally goes for around $220 or so. It runs a 1GHz Arm Cortex A8 processor and sports Android 2.3. Note the Android Market isn’t available here. There are a range of Apps included on the Tablet as well that cover what you expect to see from this kind of value-add package.

This pilot program supposedly has 5000 Tablets ready to go which should give a good indication of whether or not this kind of marketing plan will work. I would imagine quite a few eyes will be on the Philadelphia Media Network and its Tablet.

How about you? Does this kind of pre-packaged content and Tablet sound like something you’d go for? If you’re in the Philadelphia Market, we’d love to hear if anyone picks one of these up or sees these in action. Let us know in comments.