TCA Today: Fox is Still Tops at TCA, But All the Broadcast Networks Brought their A-Game

Every year I file a report from the Summer Television Critics Association tour singling out Fox as the best among the broadcast networks at promoting its product to TCA members. This year will be no different &#8211; Fox is still tops &#8211; but it must be said that CBS, NBC and ABC each brought its A-game, too. Among all of them, there was hardly a meal, a snack break or a free area space in the lobby outside the ballroom at the Beverly Hilton, where all TCA press conferences take place, that wasn't utilized to promote one of their programs or products. It's as if they were all following the Fox TCA handbook &#8211; or at least paying close attention to my summer reports of recent years.Before I continue, this might be a good opportunity to point out that, with so much studio and network money now being directed toward Comic-Con, perhaps at the expense of future TCA tours, the more than 200 journalists in this organization will do more to keep the networks' new and returning series in the forefront of the public's attention in the weeks and months to come than the thousands of rabid fan boys and girls at the Con who shoot their collective load over the course of one weekend in San Diego and then go home.It sure looks to me as though money invested in TCA tours is money well spent. In fact, money spent generating press interest in shows &#8211; particularly the good ones &#8211; is never a waste. Consider the fact that Fox began aggressively promoting one of its new fall series several weeks before TCA began, with a modest cocktail reception in New York for the three young stars of its upcoming Texas-based soap opera Lone Star. Despite the withering heat and humidity at the time, there was an excellent turnout of top television reporters and editors from a number of national magazines and entertainment Web sites. Most of them already thought Lone Star was one of the better new offerings in what is increasingly looking to be a disappointing fall season. But Lone Star leads James Wolk, Adrianne Palicki and Eloise Mumford were all so talkative and charming that everyone left more interested in the show than when they arrived. That's not to say this group will continue to support Lone Star if subsequent episodes fail to live up to the promise of its pilot. But they'll be there at the beginning and will help generate that all-important buzz for it.In fact, several of the people who were at that party in New York are also at TCA and have been saying good things about Lone Star since this tour began. I'd call that a big win for Fox.Getting back to Fox's impact at TCA, the network began its day on Monday with one of those themed breakfasts it does so well &#8211; this one featuring the casts of The Good Guys and Human Target freely milling about, ready to chat with critics over coffee. There was a lounge area right next to the breakfast locale decorated with eye-catching Fox pillows where talent and reporters could hang. Across from that and available all day was a green-screen digital photo booth in which reporters could be inserted into photos with their favorite Fox characters. (Those pictures were great stuff for Web sites, blogs, social networking pages and tweets.) Inside the ballroom four different containers of candy with the network's logo on top were placed at every work station. Throughout the day different promotional items appeared at those stations between sessions, including a Lone Star key chain, wet wipes with the logo from the upcoming white trash comedy Raising Hope on the container, and a Glee book.Lunch was served in a festively decorated room and included a table read of an upcoming episode of American Dad by executive producer Seth MacFarlane and the rest of the cast. The mandatory mid-afternoon snack break was populated by the creators and executive producers of Fox's animated series as well as costumed characters from each of those shows strolling about and posing for pictures.In addition to sundaes and other treats, the snack break offerings included bottles of soda in many different flavors, with each bottle sporting a custom-designed label featuring two characters from the cast of Glee. (The bottles set off a frenzy of hoarding by a number of journalists in the room. I have to admit they were pretty cool.)Fox topped it all off that night with the biggest TCA party of all at the Santa Monica Pier amusement park. The network had an excellent turnout of stars from its shows (and from many of the shows on sister cable network FX). Interestingly, many of the network's young stars left early (some mumbling that the night air off the Pacific was too cold for them), but 84-year-old Cloris Leachman (from Raising Hope) stayed until the very end (well after 10 p.m.). After twenty years of TCA tours I thought I had seen everything, until Leachman strapped herself into a bungee contraption and began bouncing off a trampoline and taking flight. And after that she attempted to scale a rock wall!&#160;As I've said here and in other reports, the broadcast networks' new fall offerings overall aren't wowing anyone. But given the effort each network has put into promoting them at TCA and elsewhere, it won't be the publicity and marketing departments' fault if they fail.

TCA Today: Fox is Still Tops at TCA, But All the Broadcast Networks Brought their A-Game

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Ed Martin

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