Get the latest gossip
‘I Wanted to Promise a Twist’: How CBS Got People to Watch a Matlock Reboot
“We certainly would never set out to disparage what Matlock was,” says CBS’s head of marketing.
CBS chief marketing officer Mike Benson has spent the last 18 months obsessing over Matlock — or, to be more precise, how to sell 2024 audiences on the Eye’s new reboot of the Andy Griffith-led legal mystery. I recently talked to Benson about the solution he and his team came up with, as well as the more general challenge of marketing a broadcast series in a streaming era, and the (somewhat) unusual decision to wait a month between airing the first and second episodes of the show. There was all the promotion over the summer geared toward the sneak preview in September, and then for the last month, you’ve been hyping Matlock ’s official Thursday premiere this week.But even though millions of people have seen it, you still haven’t revealed the twist in your marketing, right?
Or read this on VULTURE
