Radio And Baseball Will Help Pitch ‘Arsenio’

CBS Television Distribution is ramping up promotion for Arsenio Hall’s upcoming latenight talk show, with a strategy that includes radio ads and appearances by Hall on radio shows around the country likely up to Sept. 9, the day Arsenio Hall will premiere on stations owned by Tribune, Sinclair and other groups.

“Radio will play a very big role in this,” says Michael Mischler, executive vice president of marketing at CBS Television Distribution. Mischler, other CBS executives and Hall have been meeting this week with stations at PromaxBDA Station Summit in Las Vegas. “Music was a big part of his last show. We just want to make sure that people are talking about Arsenio.”

CTD will also use outdoor billboards in some markets. And in eight markets, ads that don’t look like ads will air inside the ballparks of Major League Baseball teams.

“At ball games we are doing a ‘Woof Cam,’ ” Mischler says. “Arsenio will deliver a message to the crowd, ‘I can’t hear you.’ The camera will turn to people doing the ‘Woof.’ It gets us on the air in front of his core audience.”

Those spots will run about 10 times in each ballpark.

CBS will send stations more than a dozen additional promotional spots over the next couple of months. Arsenio promos started airing last December.

“We are probably going to deliver about a dozen spots they can run all the way through July,” Mischler says. “In August, we will ship the final group, which are all about creating excitement and a countdown. And we’ll know by then who our first guest will be.”

TV stations will continue to air promos after Arsenio debuts, including with some spots that CTD will send to stations the same day that Hall tapes an episode. “By 7:30 or 8 p.m. we could cut together a promo from the first half of the show to run in that night’s news,” Mischler says.