Clutter Cutter

John Miller has been promoting TV programs since the 1970s when the Big Three broadcast networks constituted commercial television. But things have changed: The 500-channel universe is now a reality, and Miller is now chief marketing officer of NBC Universal Television Group. Whatever his title, he has been overseeing marketing and promotion for NBC since 1985. The Emmy winner explains how he keeps one step ahead of the competition.

PROMO: Isn’t the television business a lot more complicated than it used to be?

MILLER: I’ve been running NBC’s advertising and promotion department since 1985. Back then, ABC, CBS and NBC took a 90 share of the audience. If you were below a 30 share, you were headed towards cancellation. Today if you get a 15 share, you’re a massive hit.

P: How did you promote in the old days?

M: Back in 1985 [Bill] Cosby was coming back to television. We’d say, ‘Cosby’s back,’ show a little bit of the show and get a 48 share. And TV Guide reached 20 million homes, and your ad would hit 25% of the TV households. Now it’s 3.5 million. From late August to the first week in October, the five [broadcast] television networks spent close to $200 million to launch new shows, all at the same time. Over the course of the summer between 70 and 100 original cable shows launched.

P: How do you cut through the clutter?

M: You use on-air, print, radio, digital media, viral activities, cross marketing with other companies, online sampling efforts, DVDs and Barnum & Bailey stunts just to get some attention.

P: How did you get fans of NBC’s ‘My Name Is Earl’ to recently protest in front of a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Philadelphia?

M: We were trying to figure out how to create some attention for a show that’s two or three years old. One of our guys suggested that we could have something like ‘We Are the World,’ and instead try to get Earl out of jail (a series storyline). We invited the Earl fan e-mail list to be in a video. We did a behind-the-scenes mock documentary on the making of the video, put it online and then put it on the air.

P: How did KFC get involved?

M: We were already doing a KFC Karma promotion that was lined up six months ago. We modified the promotion to bring it into ‘Free Earl,’ and gave KFC all the posters and banners. KFC did a lot of good business that day. It created so much traffic that the police had to direct it around this KFC. ‘Access Hollywood’ (NBC) and ‘Entertainment Tonight’ (CBS) covered it. We just wanted to get a good photo opportunity.

P: How does NBC take advantage of fans on the Internet?

M: For ‘Heroes,’ there were 40 fan Web sites before we even launched the show. We offered some guy $10,000 for Heroestheseries.com and were turned down. But they remained loyal to the show.

P: Any other recent promotions for other NBC shows?

M: ‘Friday Night Lights’ has very strong grassroots appeal. There are some really avid fans for it. We went to houseparty.com, which takes online registrations for house parties. We created a special house party kit for the show. So fans were asked to invite up to 15 friends to watch the season premiere about two weeks ahead of time. We offered paraphernalia and DVDs of season one. We thought we’d get a thousand parties. As it turned out, we had nearly 4,000 registrants. We had a member of the cast go down to one. We created an army of evangelistic supporters to begin to talk it up.

P: What was the wildest stunt you ever ran?

M: About 10 years ago, we had a show called ‘Asteroid.’ I went to our special effects people and told them I wanted to make it look like an asteroid hit NBC — make it look like the letters were falling down and pieces of concrete around. It got picked up by USA Today and several newspapers. It was a $2,000 special effects job, but got me probably a half-million dollars of exposure.

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