NBC’s Promos a Sport in Themselves

If you’ve watched any of the Winter Olympics (and ratings data indicate that more than 170 million U.S. residents have tuned in for at least a while), odds are you’ve seen more than a few promos for Julia Louis-Dreyfus’ new NBC series, “Watching Ellie,” which premieres next week. The question is, did those promos make you want to watch the show or toss eggs at the sets where it’s being filmed?

There’s a fine line when it comes to promotion, and networks appear increasingly tempted to cross it, as NBC did a few weeks ago by singling out a small subplot on “The West Wing” about a journalist missing abroad, clearly trying to tap into the life-mirrors-art abduction of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl.

When NBC agreed to pay billions for rights to the Olympics through 2008, one big rationale was that the Games provide an unparalleled platform to promote the network’s programming, an extended version of what the Super Bowl, Academy Awards and other major events reliably do. Even “Friends,” to which NBC recently committed more than $150 million to renew for a final year, justifies that price tag in part because the series offers a similar promotional showcase on a weekly basis.

Because network ratings have become fragmented by an explosion of viewing options, a single channel seldom draws that sort of sprawling crowd into the tent simultaneously anymore, making programmers ever more desperate to capitalize on such opportunities.

But do television’s old promotional tricks really work on jaded, media-savvy viewers as well as they once did? And even if they do, what exactly are broadcasters telling us with the messages they send?

Consider local TV news, where the long-standing strategy has been simply to try to scare people into watching. Just last week, for example, KNBC-TV teased a story before the network’s Olympic coverage began as follows: “It could be in your child’s playground. A silent killer. What is it? Find out at 11.” Sorry, but if there is a silent killer in their child’s playground, one suspects most people would want to know about it right now.

Picking up where it left off with restaurants during an earlier sweeps period, KCBS-TV has also sought to alarm people with shrieking ads about pedophiles who might be living in your neighborhood and about valet parking attendants. Based on KCBS’ promos, you half-expect that parking attendants (just the mere words invoke terror) will be this year’s most popular Halloween costume.

Network news is only slightly more restrained on this score, regularly teasing “what you need to know” about some potential--and, on closer inspection, often colossally remote--danger.

Lacking the means to frighten you into watching “The Job” or “Titus,” entertainment programs tend to rely upon a steady dose of hype, lies and videotape, a point that hasn’t been lost on reader Brian Magnuson, whose observational skills doubtless have something to do with his first name. Magnuson wrote in, wanting to know how Fox, for starters, could tout the since-canceled “The Chamber” as a show “all of America is talking about” when, as he put it, “Nobody I know even knows it’s on.”

He was just warming up. “ABC says the final five minutes of ‘The Practice’ is ‘the most shocking five minutes you’ll ever witness.’ Uh, no, it wasn’t. And NBC implores viewers to stick around for ‘the last two minutes’ of ‘Scrubs’? What does that say about the first 28?”

If these sleight-of-hand tricks occur at every network, NBC--whose promotional gurus take a back seat to no one--has elevated the craft to near-legendary heights. Indeed, it was only a few years ago that producers of “Frasier” were so annoyed by NBC’s giving away jokes during promos that they withheld footage from an episode, prompting the network to cobble together ads saying the show’s opening that week was so funny, “We can’t show it to you.”

Still, the back story to NBC’s Olympic promos, minus the maudlin piano music that historically accompanies these back stories, is that the corporate clock is clearly ticking in terms of establishing some new hits.

Sure, NBC managed to renew “Friends” for another year, but that show is near its end, and the network is paying millions for the privilege of keeping that program, “Frasier” and “ER” on its schedule, with another expensive negotiation for “The West Wing” still to come.

At the same time, “Will & Grace” doesn’t appear to be the sort of mass-appeal hit to prop up a night as have those venerable franchises, which, despite their enduring popularity, yield diminishing financial returns because of the huge fees the network is shelling out. In other words, NBC needs to establish some worthy successors soon, or “Must-See TV” will be “Musty TV” faster than you can say “Inside Schwartz.”

Beyond the Olympics, moreover, NBC has largely bowed out of the expensive TV rights bidding for major sports, relinquishing NFL football to CBS in 1998 and NBA basketball next season to desperate ABC. Although NBC is losing gobs of money on the NBA, televising the championship series in June has traditionally attracted a vast audience--and especially hard-to-reach males--to which the network can promote new offerings, last summer helping spawn the bug-munching “Fear Factor.”

All told, then, NBC’s downhill run through the Olympics is only the preliminary event in its uphill battle to inspire you--yes, you--to hang around long enough to sample its shows after the luge screeches to a halt.

Eventually, of course, some enterprising Silicon Valley wizard will perfect technology to literally reach through the set and grab you, but until then, squeezing promos for “Watching Ellie” and new “Friends” tag-along “Leap of Faith” into every nook and cranny of Olympic coverage is the next best thing. Because rest assured, this race for the gold has begun, the finish line is approaching and the plan to win the judges’ hearts, apparently, is a double axel with a twist that lands on just this side of begging and pleading.

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Brian Lowry’s column appears Wednesdays. He can be reached at brian.lowry@latimes.com.