ALT="WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? sherlock holmes WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? WHERE'S THE 6:05? Channel Thirteen: It takes your mind off the dumb stuff"

Versions of this WNET ad are showing up on transit billboards around New York City. (Web reproduction only approximates actual typography of the ad.)

Ad campaign goal in New York City: remind viewers they can relax with public TV

Originally published in Current, Feb. 12, 1996
By Steve Behrens

With the largest ad campaign in its history, New York's WNET wants to nudge its public image toward the "fun'' end of the media scale.

"The public has always given us high marks for depth and quality,'' says Karen Salerno, managing director of the station's communications group. "For this campaign, we wanted to position Thirteen as not just edifying, but as a relaxing and satisfying experience.''

The series of ads, which debuted last week on posters along train platforms and inside buses, juxtapose wearying, mundane phrases from daily life, such as "I've had it with winter,'' with references to enjoyable PBS shows, such as "Charlie Rose is cool.'' Each ad ends with the tag line: "Channel Thirteen. It takes your mind off the dumb stuff.''

Variations put "Are we there yet?'' with "Big Bird Rules,'' "Where are my keys?'' with "Mystery!'' and "I'm having a bad hair day'' with "What's on Nature tonight?''

The image campaign takes a distinctly different, more playful approach than most of public TV's image ads, which sell its excellence, information value and community service.

"Some people here don't like it,'' says WNET programming chief Ward Chamberlin. "It doesn't hit our elite image that some people think we should have.'' Chamberlin and others appreciated the humor. "I really like the fact that it makes us look a little more human than a lot of the advertising that says we're educational and serious and have a lot of content.''

The PBS image campaign, executed in recent years by the Hal Riney agency, "does a very good job of being noble in a human way,'' says Mike Drazen, creative director of the Earle Palmer Brown ad agency that developed the WNET campaign, but the New York station chose to speak in a different voice--"genuinely disarming, slightly irreverent, that didn't sound like public television talking.''

He hopes the ads will sound like a person you'd like to know. "If I was entertained and disarmed by the tone of the advertising,'' says the adman, "I might want to give public television a second look, or more of a look.''

"Clearly, public television gets high points for doing things in the public good and for being cultural and educational,'' says Drazen. "But unfortunately it gets equally high points for being dull. In a world that has such an endless selection of entertainment, that becomes an increasing problem.''

The campaign, using media valued at more than $1 million, became possible when TDI, the country's largest out-of-home advertising company, offered extensive space on its transit billboards.

"Our focus was to take advantage of the media partnership with TDI,'' says Colby Kelly, WNET's director of strategic communications. "Posters don't lend themselves to tune-in [promotion] because they're up for some time.'' So the station began a long process of meetings with its staff, and then its ad agency, and came up with a kind of hybrid--an image campaign that aims to increase viewing.

The ads speak directly to public TV's core audience. "We made a clear decision not to chase the 18-35-year-old viewer,'' says Salerno. "There's a big group of people in that older demographic that we deliver.''

In addition to TDI, other media companies agreed to provide space, so that the transit posters will be reinforced by ads in New York magazine, the Daily News, Crain's New York Business and Playbill. Later this month, TDI will begin posting WNET ads on the back of buses and on phone kiosks, according to Kelly. A broadcast version has not been designed so far.

"Three weeks from now,'' says Kelly, "there won't be many New Yorkers who haven't seen at least three versions of the ads.''

WNET acquired some of the space "partially on a trade basis'' for underwriting credits, says Salerno, but there was also an element of contribution for the media companies.

The tag line steps around a couple of pitfalls for public TV. It avoids competitive comparisons with commercial TV, though it manages to contrast WNET's programs with "dumb stuff.'' And it offers only to "take your mind off'' such stuff, without promising outright, prolonged laughter.

That's just as well since, as Chamberlin acknowledges, "There's so little on public television that's a lot of fun.'' But while commercial TV takes the viewer's mind off of personal woes and dribbles it away, Chamberlin adds, public TV engages the mind in other things.