And let the promos begin

A lone soldier stands in a subway station gazing at tiny figures running on a flickering screen. Two firemen perched by their truck stare silently at the image. A pedestrian pauses on a street before the glass window of an electronics store, looking with a kind of quiet pride at multiple television screens projecting the same spectacle.

The only accompanying sound is a solemn rendition of “The Star-Spangled Banner.”

Lump-in-the-throat patriotic imagery from a presidential campaign consultant? Try again. This spot is part of another high-stakes campaign -- one now being quietly tested to build audiences for NBC’s coverage of the Aug. 13-29 Summer Olympics in Athens.

The network paid $4.3 billion for U.S. rights to broadcast five Olympics, upward of $800 million for Athens alone, and it’s leaving nothing to chance, creating promotions steeped in patriotic themes and infused with images familiar to anyone who watches reality TV.

The Olympics aren’t just an opportunity for broadcasting great sports and human interest stories or to charge advertisers huge rates. They also form, for NBC, a crucial publicity platform to promote its fall season. All of which leads us here, to the Desert Passages shopping center, where 10 recruiters are casting for research volunteers among the 60,000 or so people who visit this “Arabian Nights”-themed mall each day.

“Hi, folks, we’re with the NBC television network!” recruiter Morley Meyers calls to a young man and woman as they shuffle past the test center.

“Make it fast if you’re selling something,” the young man shoots back. After a few minutes of quiet persuasion, however, the couple agree to join the survey.

Once volunteers understand “we’re not trying to sell them anything,” they participate “for the thrill of it, for the love, for the showbiz,” Meyers says.

Yet while they’re not being asked to shell out money, they are definitely being sold something: NBC wants them to buy into their expensive programming, this weekend, this summer and this fall. So in addition to six possible promos for the Summer Games, today’s participants offered their opinions on a spot for “10.5,” NBC’s reported $20 million miniseries, which premieres tonight.

The recruiters work for Hollywood Previews, one of several television market research companies that have sprung up in Las Vegas in the last few years because TV executives believe this glitzy city is not just a showcase of American popular culture but also its predictor.

Networks contract test centers like Hollywood Previews to collect fast feedback from a geographically diverse audience. Results from this mid-April, seven-promo study featuring 200 men and women from at least 38 states will be completed and presented to NBC within 48 hours.

John Miller, president of the NBC Agency, the network’s in-house ad agency, describes the spots for the Athens Games as, “a huge event for NBC ... the most-watched event in all of television.” He estimates the Games draw 200 million viewers, making them “the ultimate reach vehicle” to flagging network audiences.

That the Olympics are especially enticing to the elusive young-male audience makes them only more valuable to the network.

Patriotic flare

NBC executives who trekked to Las Vegas are anxious to see how supposedly average Americans react to the distinctly patriotic flavor of the network’s spots for this election-year, wartime Olympic Games.

Network strategies around the Olympics have shifted in the past two decades from targeting America’s core sports audience -- men between 18 and 49 -- to families, and from pure action to personalities, rivalries and human drama. The events of Sept. 11, 2001, threw a new ingredient into the mix: patriotism. Although the six Olympic promos Hollywood Previews screened may never be aired, they make it clear that NBC executives paid close attention to the waving flags and yellow ribbons displayed across heartland America over the last three years.

All six Olympic promos showcase exclusively American athletes, and several feature generous doses of American flag waving and “we’re No. 1” finger gestures. The “Star-Spangled Banner” promo concludes with a tag line that urges viewers to “share the feeling.”

To many viewers at the testing center, the tone feels just right.

“That just sends a chill through me,” says Rhonda Rinehart, a schoolteacher on vacation from Richmond, Ind., of the national anthem promo she just viewed. “I’m very patriotic.”

“I like that,” agrees her husband, Chad. “Since 9/11 everybody’s been behind the country, but we need to keep it that way.”

“I liked the patriotic ‘win one for the Gipper’ tone,” says Matthew Knight, an engineering technician for ChevronTexaco in Bakersfield.

Charles Pero of Dallas, on the other hand, found the promo “a little too solemn. It brought people back to 9/11.”

“It was too much America,” says Culver City Christian School teacher Eileen Mabalay. “I’d like to see them interacting with other countries.” “Who cares?” says her companion, Angel Lomboy, a special education teacher from L.A.’s Westchester neighborhood. “It’s the Olympics. I just want America to win.”

Shoring up the season

NBC is counting on the promos’ feel-good message to transfer to the rest of its lineup, which saw its year-to-year ratings slip 15% last fall. It’s not alone. All the broadcast networks, facing an increasingly fragmented audience easily distracted by cable offerings, video games and DVDs, are testing series and specials regularly and even 15- and 30-second promos for those shows get close scrutiny.

According to the advertising research firm Nielsen Monitor-Plus, 21,733 30-second promos aired on the six major networks during the fall 2003 season. NBC estimates it airs 10,000 promos each year. The promos, which consume up to three minutes of airtime for every 22 minutes of television, cost an average of $3,000 to make and can run in prime-time slots valued at $500,000 or more.

Once it gets viewers to the Olympics, NBC plans to heavily promote its fall lineup and launch up to six shows -- half its lineup -- in the week after the Games’ closing ceremony.

In light of the breakout success NBC had with the reality show “The Apprentice,” it’s hardly surprising that NBC’s Miller casts the Games as “less a sporting event than the ultimate reality television. There’s human drama playing out before your eyes.”

It’s there in three of the promos, which played up both the attractiveness and personal challenges faced by the starring “characters.” In one promo American swimmer Natalie Coughlin is seen as a fierce competitor in the water, an attractive young woman on land, and, in a flashback sequence, an adorable baby.

Another emphasizes the underdog status of the 1996 American women’s Olympic soccer team, which went on to win the gold. Popular sports, such as track and field, swimming and gymnastics are central features in the spots.

Another features five-time medal winner Marion Jones sprinting across the finish line as singer Josh Groban’s “You Raise Me Up” -- a song that seems tailor-made to a nation hungering for emotional lift -- lilts in the background.

It’s Hollywood Previews’ job to discern whether these messages get across. Just steps away from the opulent tack of the purported “world’s largest Aloha shirt” and the Elvis and Priscilla Chapel at the adjacent Aladdin Resort & Casino, they invite in the willing to hunch before touch-screen computers to watch the six clips, followed by a series of open-ended and multiple-choice questions. Participants, who are paid $10 for their troubles, are asked whether the featured events appeared “exciting,” “confusing,” “dramatic” or “silly.” Viewers are also given hand-held green and red buttons to punch, allowing them to pinpoint “good” and “bad” moments as each promo is shown. “We want their first impressions,” says Myra Tabak, a former stand-up comedian who works as a part-time session director for Hollywood Previews. “By hitting on those buttons you’re creating a graph for the network.”

For some would-be participants, though, their willingness has nothing to do with patriotism, or whether they find promotional spots silly, and everything to do with comfort.

“Do I get to sit?” one young woman asks the recruiter trying to entice her in. “I just want to sit. If I can sit for 15 to 20 minutes and relax that’s great.”