Mon 13 Jul 2009
CHUCK Vs. Twitter
Posted by Nick C under CHUCK, NBC
[45] Comments
First off, sorry for the lack of articles this month. I was on holiday. So lets get to an important subject matter for CHUCK fans:
CHUCK fans came up with a nifty little campaign to help the show during its extremely long hiatus. For those of you not aware, CHUCK won’t be airing new episodes until March 2010. So from now until then, it’s going to be internet based advertising by NBC and by the fans of CHUCK. The campaign the fans came up with is CHUCK ME Mondays. Basically from a set time which I believe to be one hour after CHUCK would normally air on Mondays, the fans all get together to watch an episode online. They chat about it, and have fun.
The CHUCK ME Mondays will work so that every Monday they watch an old episode until the new ones air. I believe they have it all worked out so that from the start of Season 1 to the end of Season 2 will line up exactly for the new episodes.
It’s not a bad plan. The episodes are available easily online. However for it to work, they really need to be introducing this show to NEW people. So how does one do that? Well the easiest way is as a trending topic at Twitter. You break the top 10, you get CHUCK massive advertising. Theoretically you just have to reach new Nielsen viewers.
So the problem is since the first night I have yet to notice #CHUCK Me Mondays as a trending topic on Twitter. So this great idea isn’t being taken advantage of. This is actually a fan campaign that would work. I’m always dissing certain fan bases for their absurd plans. This isn’t absurd. CHUCK due to being on NBC hasn’t had the exposure of many other shows. It hasn’t been watched by 19 million people on one night. I think its top night was 9M or something. So, this is a plan that could introduce the show to future viewers while there is really nothing else to watch. Just get them to watch one episode online and then go “hey, I need to rent this,” or “hey, I need to buy this,” or “hey, I need to watch all of these online.” It’s not rocket science.
So CHUCK fans need to Twit tonight, and twit like crazy. So far there is no massive news to fight. So twit CHUCK. The episode tonight is I believe CHUCK Vs The Alma Mater.
However for this to work, I think googling the subject should come up with a page about the weekly episode. I tried looking for a page that would be home to it, but CHUCKTV.NET isn’t that smart. They just do a page for each new episode. Make it easier CHUCKTV, make it easier.
This will be easier to pull off before the Fall Season kicks off. So CHUCK fans get out there and let people know about CHUCK on Twitter. NBC would be smart to play along and make it easier on their website as well. I’ll try and see if I can make an in-road with that aspect. Meanwhile, fans, and non-CHUCK fans interested go watch an episode tonight.
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Join us today and experience ChuckMeMondays for yourself.
For the Pilot, ChuckMeMondays made it all the way to #4 on Twitter (albeit only briefly). After that the show has trended to anywhere from #7 to #9 depending on the news cycle. I was away last week so I couldn’t participate, not sure what happened then.
I think the biggest problem Chuck fans face, aside from breaking news, is that the event is essentially too short. Twitter has a lag time for trending, about ten to twenty minutes. So what was happening was it took at least until half way through the episode for the topic to start to trend. The episode would then end twenty or thirty minutes later, and the topic would quickly drop off the chart. To combat this, ChuckTV got the idea to start tweeting early, say fifteen minutes or so, to get the topic trending earlier. Its a good idea, but one they need to publicize more, as I’m just not sure enough people understand why they’re doing it.
Still, the biggest problem seems to be that the episodes are only an hour. ChuckMeMondays trends, but not for nearly long enough. It needs hours, not half an hour. I’ve been trying to think of ways to fix this, to maybe see if ChuckTV would publicize setting aside a few Mondays for Chuck marathons, not just watching one episode. But those would have to be planned in advance. Another idea I had, is to try to get some of the actors or crew to join in–a bunch of them are on twitter–and maybe tell us some trivia from the episode, sort of like a live DVD commentary. But I doubt they’d respond to anything other than ChuckTV inviting them.
Other than that, it really is a good idea. If you check the ChuckMeMondays trend stream you can see some people asking what’s it all about. So it is attracting eyes. Also, its a good way to keep the fans buzzing, which in turn keeps us all motivated to go out and recruit new fans. I still recommend to all Chuck fans, go buy two copies of the DVD set. Use one to loan out. In my experience it has never failed to hook new viewers.
It needs to be a day long topic. CHUCK fans need to get loud on Mondays and build up the expectation, then have people join. Twitting during isn’t going to really do it.
Remote Access has a weekly blog on Chuckmemondays. Brian also writes retro reviews. We have trended every week but it is so short lived that you would have to be online during Chuck to see the trend.
A full day of trending would be great. Maybe if ChuckTV asked fans on Monday to list their top ten favorite things about that night’s episode, or top ten lines? That’s ten tweets per fan right there, plus its about something that will spur discussion.
Maybe we can see if ChuckTV is willing to do a special ChuckMeMonday on Labor Day? It’s a Monday people will have off from work and lots of people marathon TV anyway that day. If we continue on the current schedule…we’ll finish S1 on August 24th…we could take off August 31st and have a full-day marathon on Labor Day…all 13 episodes of S1, ending with the S2 premiere at 9pm (normal ChuckMeMonday time). It could help trend the topic all day.
We could also ask people who are going to Comic Con to spread the work about ChuckMeMonday’s to other fans at the event. Let’s face it, those are the people who’d be inclined to do it…the hard core fans. I’ll be wearing my Chuck Me T-Shirt at Comic Con and talking it up to anyone who’ll listen. If others could do the same, that would be awesome.
ChuckMeMondays and ChuckYouTuesday podcast were both elements I pushed in the presentation sent to NBC…they’re also projects where I cited the need for NBC’s support. As has been stated, it’s a great concept, that just needs a boost.
Zac is now on twitter…I wouldn’t be surprised if he joins the fans for a ChuckMeMonday. He’s been getting more active lately. You can follow him @zacpugh (I believe).
Nic…if you have any contacts at NBC, it would be beyond awesome if NBC (or their affiliate USA) would actually air a Chuck Marathon on Labor Day and show Tweets from viewers on the bottom of the screen…kinda like GhostHunter’s does for their Halloween show (though I think those are text messages). The biggest issue that Mel and Co. have had is the distribution rights are wonky…I think that the WB (& not NBC) has the online airing ability for S1. Maybe the WB.com would be willing to do it if NBC can’t.
I think the giveaways should be better publicized. People like free stuff. I didn’t know that the DVD set was being given away last week. Fans should retweet about the giveaway to bring people to the Chuck site.
The website about ChuckmeMondays is confusing and far too wordy. The internet doesn’t tolerate “tl;dr”. In general, I think the internet resources for Chuck fans could using some improvement.
I think The Office fandom is a great example of good internet resources. The show had huge internet support and fan involvement from the beginning. OfficeTally is an excellent website with a clean, easily navigable design. It engages the fans well (fans send in and are credited with Office mentions; there are polls, like episode Survivor; contests are held regularly; the site has exclusive info.)
The actors and writers has said that they rely on the website for news about their own show. They recognize the quality of the site, send in exclusive news and participate with fan Q&As and chatroom visits. The runner of the site has been brought to the set many times and even appeared as a featured extra in the last episode. The Office fans and showrunners have it right in online participation and recognizing the importance of the online fan community. The runners of the Chuck site should visit that site, talk the site runner for tips and affiliate with the site. I see a lot of crossover between fans of the two shows.
I agree with KN, the giveaways need more publicity. In fact I really wish the show and network would help out with some of that stuff, maybe signed DVD sets or posters. Can you imagine how popular (and newsworthy for entertainment journalists) ChuckMeMondays would be if the cast and crew signed a poster version of Chuck’s Chart (the Tron poster) and donated it to fan efforts to watch and recruit new viewers?
It would take minuscule effort on NBC’s part or WB’s part to help out with something like that, and the payoff would be huge.
nonUS resident fans like me aren’t able to contribute to the numbers for CHUCK ME Mondays since we can’t access the show online. but would us twittering help push the trending up? if so, i guess i’ll have to push for it since it’s the only way we can contribute, numbers-wise. we don’t have the dvd’s here that we can purchase. Chuck is being shown on cable & a nonmainstream local channel. so you can imagine how few the reach of that show is here. the internet is the only way to go for us fans in the Manila. so getting zach, YS & adam involved with twittering would be great boost. i liked the idea of them providing some trivia on the episode of the week.
agent walker, yes you can. Pop the DVD in and tweet at the right time!
hello, imkeh! don’t think i’ve seen you recently at the strahotski site. that’s great to know. oh no! can’t pop in the dvd. i’m at work CHUCK ME Mondays time. bummer! i’ll figure it out.
All of the fan-based efforts are great and worthy of praise. HOWEVER, if “Chuck” is going to really thrive and go onto a Season 4, NBC has got to get off their duff and promote this show. Let’s just say that their efforts the first two seasons have been less than stellar.
Internet chat is one thing – but I think ONE appearance of Zach Levi and Yvonne Strahovski on The Tonight Show (leading up to the return in March) or even better, one or both of them hosting/co-hosting Saturday Night Live, would exceed all the months of Internet chat in terms of “mass exposure” to the TV viewing public.
Question is – will NBC have the smarts to use these two young, handsome/attractive stars to really promote this show. Put them on the Tonight Show. Have them host SNL. Promote the heck out of the show during the Olympics. Have Subway incroporate some kind of a “Chuck” promotion campaign.
Keep up the Internet fan-based efforts, of course. But unless NBC really does their part, we’re just going to continue to paddle our rowboats upstream. Yes, we’ll make some progress in terms of picking up some additional viewers – but not the kind of progress that NBC could make by actually promoting the gem of a show that they have on their hands.
One other thing, and this has nothing to do with “Chuck,” but with Nick C.’s intro to this thread.
“I was on holiday.” (Nick C.’s words).
O.K., Nick. The only people I’ve ever heard use the expression “I was on holiday” are from England or some other European Country. Us good old USAers would say, “I was on vacation.”
Sooo…… do you hail from outside the U.S.?? Or have you adopted some “outside the U.S.” expressions as part of your everyday speech? How about letting your “fans” know a little bit about Nick C.??
Rick Holy! we’re almost always on the same page. Zac & YS can even guest star on the other more established shows in NBC.
NBC placed a lot of faith on Leno by giving him another talk show after his time in the Tonight Show was up. If they’re gonna have 2 talk shows, Mondays to Fridays, might as well put them to good use & have the entire Chuck cast & creative team do guest stints separately until March 2010. The SNL stints will take care of tapping into the weekend audience base.
They can even do a tie-up with Leno & Subway for charity, just like Ellen does with the water plunge game. Have the game portion hosted by or played with any of the Chuck cast.
(Repeat) Guest stints at Carson Daly (by YS) are welcome but won’t really help increase Chuck awareness to a new audience base. Kimmel & Letterman are by default, way better options.
You can’t fault NBC with the _amount_ of promotion they did for the show at the starts of the last two seasons. I tuned into the first episode based on the cute spots they ran all over the network. NBC played Chuck ads very frequently during the summer Olympics and treated the campaign as a re-launch of the series. There was also the Superbowl ads, appearances by ZL and 3D episode. They had ZL host their fall preview show and had a crossover with Hellboy (comic book fan base). Zac Levi has been on The Tonight Show with Leno. He’s been on The Today Show and tons of local affiliates (check the ZL youtube channel). [Hosts for SNL have to be already established or currently trendy with a big movie, album, etc coming out. Unfortunately ZL and YS don't fit that (yet).] They’ve courted the ComicCon crowd heavily.
The problem with much of NBC’s promotion is that it is done on NBC, the fourth placed network. Also, there were scheduling issues that messed up advertising momentum (a lag time between the Olympics and the start of the season; after the Superbowl episode, Obama’s speeches bumped the show).
I think there are two things that will help the show now: critics and the winter Olympics. The saved-from-the-brink-of-cancellation is a meaty story for critics when the show returns. They like the “best show you aren’t watching” stories. Also, the mid-season start comes the day after the winter Olympics. People that don’t tune into the network usually will catch the ads. The show could have a Superbowl-like bump.
I’m eager to see how the word-of-mouth fan-based efforts benefit the show (though, I don’t think there is a way to tease out that strand from the rest of the efforts).
I think using “Trending Topics” as an attempt to promote something whose existance is already widely known is completely overrated. If the idea is to attract new fans, I doubt this’ll have any impact at all.
Where it might help is to keep the show’s name (and thus the concept that it’s still alive, just “enjoying” a hiatus) alive, which may ensure people haven’t forgotten about it by January.
But attracting new viewers? Nah. The issue with people who don’t watch Chuck isn’t that they’ve not heard of the show – it’s always had a certain amount of buzz, and has had periods of high profile promotion by NBC. You can’t have heard of “The Office” and not heard of Chuck (in the US, anyway.) No, the issue is that they’re not interested, for whatever reason, be it a skimming of the concept and deciding “Meh” or an actual watching of the show and deciding “No.”
I appreciate to Chuck fans, including myself, that the above might be outrageous, that it’s simply inconceivable that anyone would watch Chuck and not like it, but there are people out there who don’t like Dollhouse for God’s sake, and I’m not refering to T:SCC fans or people who watched the first five episodes and never watched another episode. It happens. Unfortunately.
No actually, squiggleslash, its not outrageous. There are lots of people who have seen the promotions and decided “meh” or “no”. I’ve recruited a few people who when I mention Chuck they say “Oh that show? That’s a good show?” So far, after DVD viewing, they’ve all become fans.
Not saying that will happen every time, but people can change their mind after a second look. In fact most often I hear “I had no idea the show was like this.” The NBC promotions don’t really do the show justice.
squiggleslash, CHUCK is not very well known at all. So using Twitter is extremely smart.
It’s on NBC the “unwatched Network.” The top show on NBC is THE OFFICE which is watched by around 8.5M people. If it didn’t have extremely high demo ratings it would get canceled on CBS for those numbers.
We’re not talking about a show that has had a large viewing audience. The 3D show did well, but it was imho the worst episode of the entire series. Stupid gimmicks are not a good idea for attracting new viewers, unless you can provide great product.
You mention TSCC, that once had 19 million viewers and dropped to 3 million. That show was sampled by a very large part of the population and they hands down said “HELL NO.”
CHUCK’s biggest problem was NBC being stupid and not bringing the show back after the strike. It did a solid job of keeping its audience in the first season and 2nd season. The problem is the audience in the first season was larger.
Using Twitter to promote CHUCK ME MONDAYS is smart, smart, smart. Using it only during the show is dumb, dumb, dumb. They need to start in the afternoon at least and build it up on Twitter before the show even airs. I never even noticed if it trended last night at all. The 3 times I checked it wasn’t in the top 10.
Nick C – I can tell you that Chuck is talked about at work. It’s something some people enjoy and others ignore because they don’t think they’ll like it. It’s existance is widely known. Being on the fourth place network doesn’t mean shows don’t get talked about. The X-Files, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Smallville were very widely known within a year or two of their first broadcasts, despite premiering on networks not in the top three at that time (and 2/3 not in the top four.)
Believe me when I say Chuck is widely known and heard of.
Frank – Bingo: Promoting Chuck by actively lending DVDs is a viable strategy. It is, however, counter to the one being promoted by this article which is “If people see the word “#Chuck” on the right side of their Twitter screen, they’ll suddenly want to watch the show.” I absolutely agree that people not interested in the premise might change their mind having watched an episode, but that’s not going to happen if you approach promoting the show as a branding issue.
Chuck is already well known and well branded. To build a bigger audience, people who don’t watch the show need a better idea of what it’s like as a show. The word “Chuck” really, seriously, doesn’t do that by itself, which is why I sincerely believe “Trending topics” is a dead end.
If trending topics was capable of building audiences, T:SCC would still be with us (urgh) and Dollhouse’s long term future wouldn’t be dependent upon the risk Fox might find a cheap, high audience, gameshow to replace it. I’ve seen both on trending topics for days on end.
Ive always thought it should be all day on Monday because Im sure alot of fans (like me) cant tweet during that time. If we could just watch the episode anytime during the day and then make our tweets it would be easier and could help the trending. And if you happen to be on twitter during the “official” chuckmemonday time, the ep would still be fresh enough in your mind to talk about it with everyone else.
As for the giveaway, maybe it would entice people more if there was a trivia question about the ep. This way, someone who hasnt watched will be required to view the episode to get the answer and have a chance to win the prize. And maybe the prizes can be more generic, like subway gift cards instead of just chuck merchandise?
Okay I signed up for twitter and looked up the #chuckmemondays thread BUT I cannot figure out how to leave messages on the thread.
How do I actually link up to the #chuckmemonday thread so I can leave comments?
Dave,
Check this: Chuck Me Mondays: Twitter Tutorial
Squiggleslash, sorry but now you’re way out in some kind of Entertainment Weekly Land. CHUCK is not well known, BUFFY was never well known. It was a cult hit. That isn’t well known. The vast majority of America still had no clue about it. The WB had an excellent PR team. Some of their shows may have hit with some demos extremely well and been hugely popular with them. However, with the rest of the US it was “huh, wasn’t that a bad movie?”
When marketing firms question random people CHUCK scores poorly. About twice as many people are aware that The Big Bang Theory is a TV series over CHUCK being a TV series.
Just because you work somewhere that it’s talked about doesn’t mean that every workplace in America is similar.
Last season less than 1 out of 66 Americans watched an episode of CHUCK. That isn’t widely known in the world of TV marketing.
THE MENTALIST received more brand awareness just from being on CBS. The marketing was seen by 3 times as many people as CHUCK.
It’s hard for a network to promote new shows when the network happens to suck. Being in 4th place isn’t a good thing. Not having one show in the top 20 in total viewers is not a good thing.
Rick Holy, I was on Holiday. I’ve also been on a walk about, vacation, sabbatical, etc. I’ve been known to spell color with a u. Of course, I’m never going to tell anyone much about me to keep my anonymity and ability to gather information for this site and the future site.
squiggleslash no it’s not well known. on twitter or fb, when i make an ecstatic comment about chuck most of my friends are like, what the hell is Chuck?! my twitter friends think i’m crazy for doing chuckmemonday tweets.
I’m trying to do my share of converting people though.
I agree that NBC/Universal needs to do a much better job of promoting the show. Tweet and blog all you want, but when the season is approaching, if I’m not seeing ads on the various networks owned by them, I wonder how much effect it – the fan effort – will really have. Or how much NBC really believe in the show.
I mean they sure are/were cross-network promoting the heck out of Warehouse 13. I even saw many ad for that show on TENNIS (Wimbledon)! Plus they’re re- running it over on USA all the time. They need to re-run CHUCK on USA, imo.
Add me to the supporters of Zac Levi hosting SNL. The man has the comedy chops to do it, and NBC should really make that happen, regardless of his “movie star” cred. They had NPH host, and he killed for the most part.
Nick C – I think we must live in different worlds. I’d be hard pressed to find a single person, in my office, in my last office, anywhere, who hadn’t heard of BtVS. Now, if you’re going to tell me that 90% of them didn’t like it, sure, I’d go along with that, but they had heard of the TV show. And the same goes for the X-Files, extraordinarily well known at the time despite being on a fourth rated UHF-heavy network at the time.
I don’t know where you’re getting “last season less than 1 in 66 Americans watched an episode of Chuck” from. The show AVERAGED 7.4 million viewers in its second season and its performance the year before was even higher. Those are the averages, some weeks it was higher, and people would have been dipping into the show all the time.
Regardless, you’re addressing the wrong thing: you’re proposing that because a lot of people haven’t watched the show, they therefore must not have heard of it.
I’ve heard of Ghost Whisperer. I’ve never watched it.
I’ve heard of 90210. Concept never interested me.
You know those shows I mentioned? I did start watching the X-Files. But Buffy – didn’t watch it. Smallville – no interest whatsoever, never watched it.
I’ve heard of “Days of our lives”. I’ve heard of “Desperate Housewives”. Of “Malcolm in the Middle”. Of “Scrubs”, of “The New Adventures of Old Christine”. Of whatever that thing is with Amy Poehler to do with parks or something. Of “30 Rock”, “So you think you can dance”, “American Idol”… I’m looking at tonight and tomorrow’s prime time schedule, and I’ve heard of all of these shows. And I’ve not watched any of them (beyond the occasion “flip between the channels, wouldn’t register in the Nielsens even if I was a Nielsen family” way.)
Do I really need to continue here? Do you watch every TV show you’ve heard of, even the ones people talk highly of? Even the ones that are heavily hyped?
Or do you just watch the subset of shows that look to you like they may be something you’d like?
The fact Chuck’s ratings are, well, great but not in the same league as NCIS doesn’t mean people haven’t heard of the show. It just means most people who have heard of Chuck don’t see the premise as compelling or have seen enough of it to know they don’t want to watch any more.
Making #Chuck the trending topic is not the same as showing people the show. It’s not going to make anyone watch it. It’ll be seen by most people as a sign that a lot of fans are discussing the show (or discussing ground meat…), but it’s not going to promote interest in the same way as, say, lending DVDs to friends.
You’d probably be better off hiring some guy to drive a billboard around…
Nick C, when will your new site be unveiled?
Well Zac hosting SNL could happen around the holidays because he will be starring the Chipmunks Squeakal movie (Christmas). Regardless of your opinion of that franchise, it will probably be a big holiday movie moneymaker. And the timing of that would be good…it might be enough to get the show more PR prior to the Olympics and motivate NBC to give Zac a shot at SNL hosting.
I think the reason Chuck doesn’t get as much re-run promotion as some other shows (Nic comment if I’m wrong here), is because it’s actually produced by Warner Brothers, so NBC only has limited rights for distribution. Now that the DVD’s are out for S1, I think NBC would have to pay more money to the WB in order to air the show on USA. If Warehouse 13 is an NBC/Universal production, they’ve got more personal investment in getting that show noticed because they get all the proceeds and don’t have to haggle with a separate production company.
Hi squiggleslash,
While awareness doesn’t necessarily correlate to viewers, I can tell you that the ChuckMeMonday’s twitter trending has been successful in picking up a few new viewers. Would having NBC’s backing and a major PR push from the studio make a bigger, better impact…well, of course. But part of what fans are accomplishing and demonstrating with this effort is their creativity and their engagement level. With a show like Chuck, one that’s got a big advertising deal linked to product integration (a non-traditional marketing platform that operate independent of Neilsen ratings), that ‘engagement level’ is defintely something advertisers and NBC want to see.
Lending the DVD’s is a great way to spread the word, but I’ve also run into the problem where a friend who asks for the DVD’s then hoards them or never watches it. One of the things I suggested to NBC was that they offer some type of incentive to get fans to ‘Download a Friend’ using NBC’s Viewing party feature. This is a great technology feature on the NBC website where people can host a party and invite friends/family to watch a show online at a specific date/time (you send invitations and RSVP like you would a normal party). It also has chat capabilities so you can talk with the other guests. One of my proposed collaboration ideas was to have NBC get the distribution rights to the Chuck pilot (or make Ep 1 of S2 available) and incentivize people to host parties by giving away prizes…you’d earn entries for each new guest who attends one of your events, so the more people you draw in, the better your chances of winning. Who knows if they’ll buy into the idea, but they already have the technology ready…it would mostly be a matter of promoting the idea and working out distribution rights. Or perhaps, the real question is whether or not fans would be willing to host parties? Thoughts on that?
Squiggleslash, BTVS has more brand recognition now than it did when it was on the air. CHUCK has lower brand recognition than anything on CBS and that is due to it being on NBC.
You can argue all you want, but the facts are that it isn’t a known commodity. I don’t watch BIG BANG THEORY, but I know it’s on the air. I know it has nerds and a hot chick. I know nothing of the plot or who is even in it. I couldn’t tell you anything about HOW I MET YOUR MOTHER. Nothing. I know it’s on TV.
That isn’t good brand awareness. There are a great number of people who have no clue about CHUCK.
I’ve seen the marketing reports. It doesn’t score well at all. I have no reason to make it up. The twitter campaign could work if less confined.
Nick C. I’m going to assume that also from time to time you “watch the tele.”
Rick Holy, yes I picked that bad habit up in college. I say “advert,” too instead of commercial. Yet, I’m not from the UK or any of the Queen’s Territories. I did go to school in the UK, and picked up lots of interesting habits.
In the aftermath of ChuckMeMondays not trending yesterday, I wrote a blog post about Twitter and Chuck.
http://thetvobesssed.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-chuckmemondays-and-twitter-are-so.html
I agree, Nick. The problem is not hooking new viewers because, in my experience at least, people love it or at least say its a good show. Ive yet to meet a person who has watched it that has flat out hated it (yet I know of course there are those out there that do).
The thing is that people dont know what it is. Nick’s example of knowing TBBT and HIMYM but not watching it is true. Ask a random person what those shows are and they know, ask someone what Chuck is and you get a blank stare.
I work in a large place, coming into contact with 75-100 different people a day. I have met one other person who loves Chuck, and the rest had no clue what it was until I told them about it.
I think the difficulty is just getting someone to give it a chance, but we need some ideas on how to do that.
The contests and giveaways seem like they would work because people will do anything for free stuff!
When talking about show awareness, then I wonder how accurate people’s impressions of some shows are when they are aware of them.
I heard about BTVS before it began and was aware of it for it’s entire run but always avoided it because I had the impression that it was a cheap knock-off of the Kristy Swanson movie. It took quite a long time before I overcame my initial judgement.
Imo, the Dollhouse ads make the show look like some sort of 70’s soft-core porn and if I hadn’t already been planning on watching it then I absolutely would have avoided it based on my initial assessment due to the advertising.
These are only two examples, but I could come up with a good number more. Could it be that a significant number of the people who are aware of the show and have written it off without watching it have done so not because it’s not to their tastes, but instead only because they have the impression that it is not something that would appeal to them?
AO, this is the problem. It’s one thing to be aware that there is a TV show named CHUCK, it’s another to recognize it and be able to describe accurately what it is.
I’ve known people that thought I was talking about MY NAME IS EARL or even it being PUSHING DAISIES or “Isn’t that like the new spy version of HEROES?”
I’ve heard all kinds of things, and yes, the show has a brand recognition problem. However, it got good PR with the save. So, it’s up to NBC to take advantage of it. Trust me, Subway will be there to say “don’t screw this up.”
promoting what Chuck is all about is key. over here, when you say Chuck, they think it’s the guy from gossip girl. can you believe that? and i’ve had the same experience here in getting new chuck viewers. it takes some convincing for some, but once they started watching it, then they become hooked, too.
bottom line is, all of us are trying to market Chuck in our own way. NBC on their part can magnify this effort. they are supposed to have all the hotshot execs, they should figure out what to do with all the great ideas that came about & implemented during the save Chuck campaigns, and translate it to something workable for them. if they need to talk to or get more support from Warner Bros, i think they should start doing so. we can only do so much. but they are the home network of Chuck, naturally we will look to them to do their part as well.
I don’t believe for a millisecond that everybody already knows about this show.
Why then did nobody in my family know anything about the show whatever?
And everybody at work also has not heard about the show.
Everybody in my family from my 70 year old dad to my college graduate sister and the rest have now watched the show thanks to me and enjoyed it. Next will be some co-workers.
Chuck sells itself. The most interesting comment I have read on this thread is that NBC’s top show is Office which gets only 8.5 million viewers. So it would be hard to imagine people randomly checking out NBC shows with that kind of track record.
I am completely convinced that every younger kid would watch Chuck, most college kids would watch Chuck, and a decent amount of regular adults as well. They just need somebody to put the show in front of their eyeballs.
Zach, Yvonne and the whole damn cast of Chuck doing Saturday Night Live is so obvious that only NBC could fail to ‘get it’…
“Could it be that a significant number of the people who are aware of the show and have written it off without watching it have done so not because it’s not to their tastes, but instead only because they have the impression that it is not something that would appeal to them?”
Yes. In my experience, of the people who have heard of it and cast it off, this is exactly why. Their idea of what the show is all about was completely different from what the show is actually about.
“However, it got good PR with the save. So, it’s up to NBC to take advantage of it. Trust me, Subway will be there to say “don’t screw this up.””
Sad to think that NBC can’t make good decisions on their own, but alas… Thank goodness for Subway. Nick, do you think it would benefit the show if the fans tried to recruit even more sponsors? The reason I say that is while the existing fanbase is strong, you can see the issues cropping up with recruiting new fans. What if part of the effort was diverted to courting another sponsor in addition to Subway? Perhaps even one complimentary to Subway? If they buy in as another sponsor to the show, that might help keep Chuck trucking along even with the ratings staying flat where they are.
I agree that the show was not really explained very well either.
A nerdy geek everyguy needs to save the world at minimum wage…mmmmm, not so interested thanks…
I would classify the show as a “breathtaking spy/action/ comedy with the best love interest on television. A regular guy gets entangled in a CIA power struggle and falls for the agent. “
So what should we be doing to help chuck?
How do we fix this problem?
as with everything else, there is strength in numbers. i think there are enough avid fans who’d do anything for the show. we just need to be pointed in the right direction, or in this case, the right marketing effort. BUT, IMO, these will still need to be complemented with efforts on NBC’s part. they can even suggest what kind of support they need from us for Chuck. otherwise, it’s just like having only 1 leg. we can still get to where we need to be. however, it becomes an issue of will we get there at the right time & what condition are we gonna be in once we get there?