Pushing the idea that kids who eat dinner every night with their families are less likely to do drugs, TV Land and Nick at Nite are running a national marketing and local cable-affiliate campaign next month for “Family Day: A Day to Eat Dinner with Your Children.”
Promos shot by Jamie Lee Curtis and Spanish-language versions starring George Lopez will encourage families to eat dinner together on Sept. 26, and both TV Land/Nick at Nite and local cable affiliates will gain ad revenue from the initiative.
“We’ve gotten a lot more momentum and support, and I think a lot of that is because the Family Dinner Day is a real event that everybody felt was something everybody could rally behind,” said MTV Networks Entertainment Group vice president of affiliate marketing Juliette Morris.
Through an agreement with rep firm National Cable Communications, American Family Insurance will sponsor spots promoting Family Day beginning Sept. 9, running up until the day of the event.
The promos will run in 17 states: Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, Nevada, North Dakota, Ohio, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah and Wisconsin.
NATIONAL TRIO
TV Land and Nick at Nite signed national sponsors Pagoda Foods, SC Johnson and Hamburger Helper, which purchased eight-second tags on 30-second promos that began running on the network Aug. 4.
Those national sponsors also backed a promotion Time Warner Cable ran Aug. 20-21 at the Mall of America in Minnesota, bringing in Leave it to Beaver stars Tony Dow and Jerry Mathers to sign autographs. Mall shoppers who stopped by the booth were also entered into a sweepstakes promotion in which the winner will get a trip for four to the Nickelodeon Hotel in Orlando, Fla.
Comcast Corp.’s Comcast Online unit is marketing the sweepstakes to its cable-modem customers, and Time Warner Cable systems are running the Curtis and Lopez public-service announcements.
Time Warner is carrying Lopez’s Spanish language PSAs on systems in San Antonio, Houston, Harlingan and El Paso, Texas. The MSO’s Wilmington, N.C.; and Greensboro, N.C., systems are running both Spanish and English-language PSAs, and its systems in South Carolina and Charlotte, N.C., will run the Curtis PSA.
Cox Communications Inc. systems are running the Spanish versions in Las Vegas; Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., and San Diego. Adelphia Communications Corp.’s Los Angeles system is running the PSAs in both English and Spanish.
AIRTIME VALUE: $2.4M
TV Land and Nick at Nite officials said they value the amount of air time dedicated to running the national PSAs at $2.4 million, but they said revenue from the eight-second tags sold to advertisers will defray expenses. TV Land has been running the PSAs eight times daily since Aug. 8, while Nick at Nite has been rotating the spots four times nightly.
Family Day was created in 2001 by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse at Columbia University.
TV Land and Nick at Nite began supporting the annual campaign in 2003 with the rollout of its “Family Table: Share More Than Meals” campaign. The networks said they dedicate $11 million annually in air time to promote Family Table.
