CBS is showing the season two “Ghosts” premiere in theaters across the country — I’m not invited. Well, unless you’re dead.
In a marketing ploy tied to the popular comedy’s comeback Thursday, the season opener “Ghosts” is shown at midnight at venues in Los Angeles, Savannah and Portland, Oregon. Empty seats. Instead, CBS invites real ghosts to watch the show – damn humans.
“We use social media and we have some media and some other people that we use to spread the word to people who are not among the living, to stop at any of these theaters and attend shows,” CBS Chief Marketing Officer Mike Benson.
And that’s what they’re already doing, including switching parachutes and showing the loop at midnight at El Rey, Wiltern, Fonda, Orpheum, and the Million Dollar Theater in Los Angeles (most of which are classic Los Angeles theaters built in the early 1900s, sure to be She already has a few ghosts living there.) In Savannah, the screening takes place at the Trustees Theater, and in Portland at Cinema 21.
“[The theaters] I love it because it brings an audience at times that it doesn’t compete with other live audiences,” Benson said. “They really appreciate that there is really no damage to their buildings at all. The overhead costs are very low. The downside is that there’s really no franchise at all.”
Of course, CBS pays an entrance fee for any ghosts walking around, by covering the theater rental fee.
“I haven’t received a lot of feedback yet, and we understand it’s hard to get data on attendance, because there’s no real way to track it,” Benson added. “So the only way to track it down is through gossip through the media. So what we’ve been hearing so far is that non-living people love it.”
Benson credited his team with coming up with the idea. “It kind of comes down to the idea of how we can be authentic and that’s something I think we can just do for this show,” he said. “And so we’re doing it and we’re excited about it. We think it’s a lot of fun. And pardon the pun, it’s in the spirit of the show.”
For neighborhoods banned from theater performances, Ghosts returns on Thursday, September 29 at 8:30 p.m. EDT/PT on CBS.
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