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...viewers have grown accustomed to the annual late-summer promotional blitz for the networks' fall premieres. But this year the hucksterism has gone far beyond the usual "ABC's the One" and "Come Home to NBC" sloganeering on- screen. Ads for network shows will turn up everywhere from billboards to women's hosiery departments. Besides CBS and NBC linkups with major retailers, a third network, Fox, has teamed with Coca-Cola to promote an Isle of Dreams Treasure Hunt. Only ABC is sitting on the sidelines...
...first time, the networks are even turning to erstwhile competitors for help with the hype. ABC is running commercials for its fall shows in movie theaters. CBS is stuffing brochures inside boxes of blank Maxell videocassettes. NBC is doing the same with Scotch cassettes. ABC is targeting the VCR user with a more high-tech gimmick: a special bar code in the network's November TV Guide ads will enable owners of specially equipped models of Panasonic VCRs to record certain ABC shows automatically...
...contest giveaways, moreover, smacks of desperation: watch our shows not because they are good but because you may win a prize. Some network executives are skeptical about the tactic's effectiveness. "Let's say 20% or 30% want to play the game," says Mark Zakarin, marketing vice president for ABC Entertainment. "The other 70% will be irritated by all the promos." Yet if the lure of loot ends up boosting the ratings, contest mania will undoubtedly spread. Anyone for Roseanne bingo...
...Time Live, Sawyer and Donaldson will be joined by an unusual (for a news show) featured player: a live studio audience. Both Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow and the revamped West 57th will feature dramatized "re-creations" of events, a dubious enterprise that blurs the line between news and entertainment. (Even ABC's World News Tonight tried the technique two weeks ago, with mock-documentary footage ostensibly showing suspected spy Felix Bloch handing a briefcase to a Soviet agent. Anchor Peter Jennings last week apologized on the air that the footage had not been clearly labeled as a simulation...
Sawyer's enthusiasms also run to tennis and movies, and Nichols has been introducing her to old films on the VCR (her most recent discovery: Renoir's The Rules of the Game). Nichols sat in on run-throughs of Sawyer's new ABC show and offered some suggestions about lighting and blocking. But, says Sawyer, "we're not very good consultants on each other's careers. We're very good, astute experts on each other and being happy." Notes a colleague: "She's like a kid, madly in love for the first time...