CBS Goes Shopping for Viewers at K mart

Attention K mart shoppers: Today’s blue-light special is . . . CBS.

In an unprecedented arrangement, the network of Dan Rather, Mike Wallace, Murphy Brown andR. Ewing, which just finished third in the prime-time ratings race for the second straight year, announced Tuesday that it has teamed up with K mart to promote its fall schedule.

“We are in an intense battle to increase our market share,” said George F. Schweitzer, CBS’ senior vice president of communications, who oversees the network’s advertising and promotional efforts. “We need to be aggressive in getting people back to network television, and we are looking for a dramatic and exciting way to generate national attention for our programs and to get people to sample them.”

Resorting to give-away tactics similar to those employed for years by local radio stations and fast-food chains, the “CBS Fall Premiere” promotional campaign will center on a viewer contest featuring more than 6 million prizes.

In addition, all 2,200 K mart stores across the country will be festooned with CBS posters, banners and other paraphernalia, trumpeting the network’s shows, stars and schedule. Videos featuring previews of CBS programs and contest information will play continuously in the stores, and all television sets in K mart electronics departments nationwide will be tuned to CBS.

Schweitzer said that this never-before-tried promotional association is an attempt to stem the tide of declining network ratings in the face of increasing competition from cable, independent stations and VCRs. CBS, NBC and ABC have seen their combined share of the prime-time audience drop from 90% to 68% in the last decade.

“We’re going to own the environment where 76 million different people shop each month,” he said.

But what about the image of CBS? Isn’t it a giant step down for the company that once called itself the Tiffany of networks to suddenly become the network of K mart?

Schweitzer said no. He insisted that this partnership was simply an aggressive marketing strategy that faces up to the harsh realities of broadcasting today--a way to “pump some life back into the network.” He said CBS’ association with K mart is “very positive.”

“We’re both mass-market businesses,” Schweitzer said. “Millions of people shop at K mart and then watch all sorts of television. Their shoppers almost exactly reflect the demographics of America. And mostly it’s young families under 40 with children at home. Those are the people we need. People go to K mart for the same reason they watch CBS--to satisfy customer needs, to find quality and value. That’s what we want to project. We’re very comfortable with that image.”

CBS hopes that the K mart-sponsored contest will generate the kind of hoopla for the new season that was noticeably lacking last fall because of production delays caused by the Writers Guild of America strike.

“We want people to have fun with it,” Schweitzer said. “When we tested this, we found that younger people liked this game more than older people, which is exactly what we want. For us that is a bonanza because we are trying to get younger viewers to watch CBS.”

Game cards and instructions on what CBS shows to watch in order to win will be distributed this September in the K mart Sunday newspaper advertising supplement that reaches 72 million homes each week, according to Schweitzer.

Each game card will contain a series of numbers. If the numbers on the card match the numbers presented on television during a particular CBS program, viewers will win prizes ranging from a CBS coffee mug to television sets, VCRs, family vacations and Chrysler mini-vans. Winners will be able to redeem many of the prizes at their local K mart outlet.

Schweitzer said that K mart approached all three networks last December with the idea of a cross-promotional campaign, just as CBS was designing a game that would help lure viewers back to the network. He explained that the network could not afford to get the game into enough viewers’ homes through normal print advertising channels, however, until the K mart advertising supplement was handed to them.

CBS’ traditional fall-season promotional campaign, which includes heavy on-air promotion and print advertising, will continue in conjunction with this and other extraordinary efforts. Next February, for example, CBS will stage a Publishers’ Clearinghouse-type sweepstakes--the grand prize being a replica of the Southfork mansion on “Dallas.”