The newest star on “Guiding Light” isn’t a corporate conniver or a gold digger. It’s a bracelet.
CBS Television is accessorizing it into the soap opera’s plot for a very specific reason: It’s gearing up to advertise and sell $29.95 replicas of the silver-dipped pewter bauble to viewers over its Web site.
Beginning Monday, the CBS Corp. network will run two weeks of unusual on-air promotions for a future plot twist that will spotlight the shiny trinket. The promos are designed to whip up interest in the “Humanity Bracelet” among loyal fans of CBS’s longest-running soap opera.
Among the questions CBS hopes “Guiding Light” fans will be asking: Which leading siren will earrings receive the cherished bracelet? What is the real story behind its mysterious origins?
The truth is, the jewelry is part of a grand merchandising experiment that CBS hopes will alter the graying economic model of broadcasting companies. If all goes well, the network plans to sell a lot of trinkets, clothes and furniture with carefully orchestrated tie-ins to plots and characters in its TV programs.
“This is an entry into a new world for us, in terms of using our network to provide other sources of revenue,” says Leslie Moonves, CBS Television president and chief executive. “The network TV business remains a good business, but not just as an advertiser-supported medium. It’s the center of the wheel of which we can get additional revenues.”
For years, corporate advertisers have used 30-second spots on the airwaves to promote household cleaners or soft drinks. But now CBS wants to do advertisers one better, inserting commercial plugs into its soap operas, sitcoms and other regular series. Procter & Gamble, the soap opera’s producer and owner, will share in any profit generated by the unusual jewelry caper. The bracelet’s licensee will also get a cut of the proceeds.
Mr. Moonves calls the bracelet sale a “pilot program.” He says the network plans to weave more products into other shows in the next six months to a year.
Possibilities include uniforms worn on the military-and-courtroom drama “Jag” or colorful blazers styled after the ones worn by Don Johnson on “Nash Bridges.” Eventually, viewers could see clothing, furniture and jewelry slipped into story lines, promoted in ads on the network and then sold over the Internet at CBS.com.
Linking merchandise to programs is becoming old hat in TV land. Walt Disney’s ABC has sent out catalogs hawking merchandise developed around ABC shows, going so far as to offer “We Love TV” underpants. And General Electric’s NBC recently unveiled a new bricks-and-mortar retail store for its own merchandise.
But the CBS bracelet offer takes the movement a step further, showing how far the Tiffany network is willing to go in its search for new revenue.
Mr. Moonves says there are “certain things that will be off limits, unless it fits naturally and tastefully into the creative story line. You won’t see us forcing product in a show,” he adds. “You won’t see a character in `Touched by an Angel’ with a Bud in her hand.”
What about a viewer who might covet that foreign correspondent’s look and want to buy a flak jacket like the kind sometimes worn by CBS news anchor Dan Rather? No sale. “I highly doubt you’ll see any of this done with the news division,” Mr. Moonves says, noting it has a different set of rules.
Asked if CBS has encountered any resistance to its merchandising plans so far, Mr. tiffany jewelry Moonves replies: “Not directly. But I’m sure there will be cases” where producers would balk. “I don’t see `Chicago Hope’ selling stethoscopes,” he says. On the other hand, he says, “I don’t think it’s a problem when we televise a football game to sell T-shirts for the University of Alabama.”
“Guiding Light” started on radio in early 1937 and leapt to TV in 1952. The bracelet was created about 2 1/2 years ago to celebrate the soap’s 60th anniversary. P&G says about 50,000 copies were sold through QVC, direct-mail offers from Publisher’s Clearinghouse and ads in Parade magazine. But the bracelet received no major promotional push and was never advertised on network television.
Since this is the bracelet’s “first major push,” a spokeswoman for P&G says the packaged-goods giant isn’t worried that the bracelet’s past history in the marketplace will inhibit sales.
The bracelet went on sale at CBS.com on Monday. CBS says the rollout was designed to let the network track sales before and after the on-air promotions began.
CBS has already been creeping into the merchandising business. Last November, the network began selling CDs of “Touched by an Angel: The Album” in a deal with Sony’s Sony Music. A spokesman says the CD “shipped platinum” — music industry lingo for a million units sold — and that sales have far exceeded expectations.
Cassettes of the CBS “Joan of Arc” miniseries went on sale in May through the CBS Web site and via a toll-free number flashed at the end of the movie.
Mr. Moonves says soap operas seemed like rich programming to push merchandise since one-third of the visitors to the CBS Web site seek biographical information about the stars and updates on plot developments of CBS soap operas.
“There is a real emotional connection to these characters,” he says.