*Borrowing tricks from TV formats * Posted online: Sunday , September 09, 2007 at 2259 hrs
**First, television presented real news. Then came fake news on parody programmes like "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart". This weekend, Fox Broadcasting will send fake news vans onto the streets of four cities to promote a real show. The show is "Back to You", a situation comedy that is scheduled to make its debut at 8 pm (Eastern and Pacific times) on September 19 on Fox, part of the News Corp. The show is about a pair of news anchors at a station in Pittsburgh who were separated whenneparate one, portrayed by Kelsey Grammer, left for a job in Los Angeles. The hilarity ensues when a humiliating career setback forces him to return and once again be teamed up with the woman who was his professional (and personal) partner. The vans, decorated to look like the news trucks sent out by local TV stations cruised the streets of Boston, Chicago, Los Angeles and New York over Labour Day weekend. They carried the call letters WURG, for the name of the make-believe Channel 9 in Pittsburgh where "Back to You" is set. In addition, the agency behind the campaign to publicise "Back to You", ADD Marketing and Advertising in Los Angeles, is putting up a website ( www.backtoyouanchorizer.com) that creates humorous images of users as news anchors, seated at a desk between Heaton and Grammer. Fox and the other big broadcast networks will spend tens of millions of dollars in the coming weeks to try to produce the elusive and ephemeral phenomenon known as buzz about the prime-time lineups for the 2007-08 season. As the "Back to You" plans demonstrate, a growing portion of those budgets is being devoted to nontraditional tactics like websites, events and e-mail messages. "We're just trying to break through in a marketplace that is absolutely saturated, especially at this time of the year, where everyone is talking to you everywhere you turn," said Joe Earley, who was recently promoted by Fox Broadcasting in Los Angeles to be executive vice president for marketing and communications. The plans for "Back to You" also include advertising in conventional media like television, radio, print and outdoor signs. "With all the shows coming on, how do you get people excited?" asked Scott Leonard, president of ADD. "The shows that are going to be talked about are the ones that are going to be watched." Other steps by Fox Broadcasting to gain attention for "Back to You" include posting a video clip from the premiere episode on YouTube. Nontraditional ways to advertise TV series are "absolutely going to become as common as doing promos on air," said Steven Levitan, an executive producer of "Back to You" who is the co-creator of the sitcom with Christopher Lloyd. --*NY Times / Stuart Elliott * --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
