A New Model in TV Promos Is Emerging

Usually when a pilot makes it into a full-fledged season, and then gets picked up for a second season, then a third, then a fourth and so on, it becomes challenging to reel the audience back in. Usually this results in better story telling.

Some shows have been creative in developing story through the circumstantial scenarios that play out. I'm thinking about Degrassi or The OC, where a season represents a full academic school year. It's predictable that the next season will occur exactly one year later.

Other shows, like 24, story arches take place months and sometimes years between seasons. Nevertheless, there has always been a method to promoting new seasons: trailers.

With a new season comes a new trailer, and with new trailers come new scenes from the new seasons. Similarly to film, taking scenes from a movie, scenes from the new episode will be used to help launch the first episode of a new season.

However, recently I haven't seen this play out with some shows. You've probably heard me write a lot about Mad Men and Suits, which is probably a good thing because it means I don't watch as much TV as you and I might think. These two shows have done something different.

Both of these shows have promoted their newest season using old footage! Every promo or TV ad you will see on television or via the internet for Mad Men was taken from Season 4. Nothing new was added to the trailer, yet it still managed to be the biggest season premiere on social media thus far.

I'm not sure how many viewers Suits will get this season, but I predict high numbers as there is a good balance of both U.S. and Canadian contributions in production.

I am very interested to see what shows will continue to use this model of secrecy. Of course it could just be that promotions have started before filming started, so there aren't any actual new scenes to show. Still, it could also be confidence in the show which ultimately goes back to better story telling.

If I was to make a product comparison, it's the same way Apple is able to get such huge line-ups at release days. They purposefully do not pre-order so that they can get a huge turn out. If this is a model that better networks are doing to their shows, that's a very interesting model to follow.