By Michael Simmonds

“Networks Go to Extremes to Promote New Shows for the Fall Season” by Bill Carter is about networks such as CBS going to great lengths to advertise their upcoming shows. A headless horseman stalking the streets of Manhattan to “amp” the new Fox series “Sleepy Hollow”to 80’s memorabilia to promote ABC’s new 80’s era comedy “The Goldbergs”.  These marketing efforts for 12 new series or 28 new new shows on five networks has been no where near simple.

The motto the network marketing executives went by was “leave no stoned unturned in the pursuit of promotional ideas”. Thus marketing budgets being passed and settling around hundreds of millons of dollars being spent trying to persuade viewers. Joe Early the chief operating officer of Fox network said “It’s exhausting, and its expensive….We were down to pebbles, and we were looking into grains of sand we could not turn over.” One of the promotions that took place was a representation of the set, set up in Madison Square Park in Manhattan.  Where people could stage a fight with the Horseman, and Fox turned it into an image where people can send it to their friends.

One of the issues affecting awareness and intent to view are familiarity with stars and what is known as “title inflation”. which is people assuming they know something about the coming show by it’s title, when in actuality is not even remotely true the shows plot. For example “Sleepy Hollow” being mistaken with the classic Disney Cartoon or also how “The Michael J. Fox Show” being so popular due to the star’s strong personal appeal. This is the main reason why some shows do well appose to others.