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At their core, on-air promotions, previews, recaps and teasers are all the same thing: advertisements. Unlike conventional advertisements that sell a product not associated with the show, promos are ads for the shows themselves. These are the "ads" aired between and during shows that highlight upcoming shows appearing later that night or week. Although this section deals with all of the above, we will frequently use the term "promos" to deal with any material promoting the network's own programming. Occasionally, it will be necessary to make distinctions between types of promos. Therefore we define them as follows:
Promos are a very high priority for the broadcast networks. The mission of the promotion department is to highlight and sell the product of the network. More than reading television guides or anything else, viewers use promotions to determine whether to watch a series and especially a television or theatrical movie. Viewers first learn of the story line, a guest star appearance on a series or the theme of a television movie from promotions. They are also used to expose viewers to programs they might not normally watch.
During the summer, the networks spend enormous amounts of money to introduce the public to their new shows for the upcoming season. In the new season, viewers will be bombarded with up to 50 new shows on all the networks, and it is the job of each promotion department to make sure viewers notice its network's shows. Frequently using a slogan or theme song, each network develops a theme to introduce its fall shows. ABC's "We're still the one" song, slogan and campaign from several years ago is one of the best known of these themes. Similarly, NBC used "NB see us" to promote its schedule.
Blockbuster events which attract large audiences are especially desirable because promos can be used during their airing to sell the schedule. Traditionally, one of the major advantages of bidding successfully for the summer Olympics is that there are so many hours available at exactly the right place in the summer to promote the new fall schedule. Promotions also tell viewers a great deal about the network's priorities including what the networks view as special or important.
From the beginning, evaluating promotions was an important part of the monitoring process. Many television writers and producers complain that they carefully craft their shows to deal with violence responsibly and then are shocked to see a promotion eliminate all the context and only feature the violence. We examined several thousand promotions. Later in the year, we made site visits to three of the four networks to meet with people involved in making promotions so that we might better understand the process.
Promotions raise serious concerns, particularly because they feature violence out of context. It is almost impossible for promotions to provide sufficient context for any violence that does occur. By definition, promotions feature only a small highlight of the upcoming program. Violence, as well as sex, is almost always featured as the highlight.
Violence is used in many ways in promos as a hook to draw viewers into the program. Viewers see violence in the promos encouraging them to watch. They then see violence in the preview at the beginning of the show. During the show, commercials often interrupt violent scenes or occur just as violence is about to erupt to ensure that viewers will continue watching. All of these promotional efforts demonstrate that networks think that rather than alienating viewers, violence attracts them to the program.
Violence is a prominent promotional device. In some instances, violence can live a long promotional life. In the 11/16/94 episode of Models, Inc., viewers saw a rape in the preview for next week's show. During the week between the shows, they saw on-air promotions featuring the rape. On 11/23, viewers saw the episode with the actual rape. Then in the recaps of the 11/30, 12/14 and 12/21 episodes, we saw the rape again.
There are logical reasons why so many promotions feature scenes of violence. Promos have only a very short time to show something interesting enough to attract the viewer. Most promos contain several scenes thus complicating efforts to explain the plot in 10 or 20 seconds. With so little time, the easiest things to feature are those that require little explanation: violence and sex. Viewers may need context to know why the violence is occurring, but they need little or no context to know that a show will contain action, guns or fistfights. Even promotions for situation comedies feature what little "action" may actually be in the show. Many jokes need a longer set up or explanation than is possible in a promo, contributing to the tendency for promos to feature a scene of comedic violence (or a sexual reference).
Some promotions do not even make a pretense of context. Walker, Texas Ranger knows that its fans are not watching because of the particular story that week, but because of the certainty that Chuck Norris will get into a fight. This point was made clear in a promo for Walker aired during Hearts Afire on 9/24/94. The promo features Chuck Norris from the waist up doing nothing more than throwing punches. Nothing in the ad mentions anything about the show and the promo is not episode specific. We see no one but Norris and there is absolutely no context. In many ways it was an honest promotion because it highlights exactly what the show is about: fighting.
Promotions have an obligation to tell the viewer what the show is about. One would expect violent programs or movies to show some violence in their promotions. Many theatrical film promos do this and, on many occasions, the network includes an advisory in the promo.
Many shows that use violence minimally and in an appropriate context end up showcasing the violence decontextualized in the promos. This is a serious concern for several reasons. First, the viewers get a mistaken impression of the show. They may believe there is much action and then become disappointed when they find only two or three minimal scenes spread through the course of the story. Sometimes a promo for a show such as Law and Order, a program which would not appeal to fans looking for fights, guns and mayhem, features what little violence there is in an effort to attract these action fans. Furthermore, violent promos frequently are run during programs geared for children or on completely non-violent shows. Even shows that are virtually free of violence are promoted utilizing the merest suggestion of violence that can be gleaned from the program. Clearly, someone is scanning these virtually non-violent shows for anything that could possibly be construed as "action."
Some of the most compressed and decontextualized violence on television appears in commercials promoting theatrical films opening in the theater. A trailer seen before a film in the theater may last up to three minutes and, while it too features many of the scenes of action and violence, it has sufficient opportunity to give viewers the gist of the story. A 30-second ad for a film, however, has substantially less opportunity to tell the story and has a tendency to only feature the violence. There are numerous examples of this which will be detailed below.
In our examination of the issue of television violence, we found promotions to raise very serious concerns. They contain some of the most compressed and intense scenes of violence on television. Because they are short, promotions usually can not provide much context for the violent acts. Promos may also be one of the easier issues in the world of television violence for the networks to correct.
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