10 P.M. Is Top Of Mind At PromaxBDA

The broadcast networks and their affiliates are meeting at PromaxBDA Station Summit this week to create marketing strategies to promote their fall lineups to viewers.

Key themes this year include using social media outlets to reach young, early adopters of technology but also adults 25-54 — local news’ core audience. As they are most years, 10 p.m. shows are critically important to stations because they carry viewers into affiliates’ lucrative late news. And, for NBC this year, it has the Summer Olympics to promote its new fall TV shows to a huge audience.

“We’ve had an incredible year,” says Therese Gamba, senior vice president of marketing at NBC Owned Television Stations. “We had the Super Bowl, we have the Olympics and it’s an election year, so there is a lot of interest from viewers in the stations.”

“The Olympics is a big piece of the fall TV promotions,” she continues. “It’s 17 days of Olympics plus the Olympic Trials. It’s a nice platform to show people in local markets what we’re doing.”

NBC and its stations will also tap into social media outlets to promote its fall programs. “Social media has become a part of the overall marketing of the brand,” says Gamba. “What’s interesting about it is the adoption rate. We do really well with adults 25-54. So, to watch that group become more involved with social media is really exciting. It’s just another way to talk to people.”

NBC is reworking some of its primetime lineup, including a few changes at 10 p.m. Among other things, it’s moving the newsmagazine Rock Center with Brian Williams into the Thursday 10 p.m. time slot, which for many years had hit dramas such as ER.

NBC has two new shows at 10 p.m. On Mondays, Revolution from J.J. Abrams is about modern-day people living on earth after electricity vanishes. Chicago Fire on Wednesdays is from Law & Order mastermind Dick Wolf.

For ABC, two 10 p.m. shows it will heavily promote for this fall are the dark drama 666 Park Avenue on Sundays and the country music drama Nashville with Connie Britton and Hayden Panettiere. That show will air on ABC’s Modern Family-anchored Wednesdays.

“For that show, we’ll attract country music fans,” says Marla Provencio, EVP and chief marketing officer at ABC Entertainment Group. “To make that show truly successful, we are going to try to reach a larger, broader audience.”

Like the other networks, ABC is tapping into social media to get the word out to viewers. “We have Tuesday comedies, Happy Endings and Don’t Trust the B—- in Apt. 23, which is very social and digitally oriented because of the age group we’re marketing to,” says Provencio.

And for the new Wednesday sitcom, The Neighbors, which is about aliens and will lead out of ABC’s Modern Family, the marketing objective is to drum up interest in the show. It’s doing that, in part, by not revealing the aliens just yet.

CBS is adding four new shows this fall, including the Sherlock Holmes drama Elementary on Thursdays at 10 p.m. The highly anticipated Vegas about a Las Vegas sheriff starring Dennis Quaid and Michael Chiklis will air on Tuesdays at 10 p.m.

One piece of CBS’s summer marketing blitz is the CBS Buzz Tour, a bus that has games and interactive features for viewers to play. It’s making stops in 60 cities.