A new advertising campaign by Turner Broadcasting aims to tell them how. In a series of commercials that will start appearing on Monday on the TNT and TBS cable channels, Turner stars like Conan O’Brien will be employed to explain the concept of TV Everywhere, which has been championed by Turner’s parent, Time Warner, as a way to retain cable subscribers.
The concept calls for episodes of television shows to be streamed online free — but only for people who already have a cable subscription. In the making for the better part of two years, TV Everywhere is now being introduced, and Turner wants subscribers to know. The ad campaign “is to educate viewers about the value they can unlock,” said Steve Koonin, the president of Turner Entertainment Networks.
“Consumers have bought tens of millions of iPhones and iPads,” Mr. Koonin said in an interview last week. “Our vision is that TV Everywhere kind of becomes the consumer-enabling technology that allows them to unlock the potential of those devices.”
The ad campaign encourages people to download TBS and TNT apps on their phones and tablets to start watching television episodes online and on demand. The apps require users to log in — or, in industry parlance, authenticate — to confirm that they are paying subscribers to a participating cable or satellite company.
The log-in process has taken a long time to put in place, but most of the major companies are now participating, including DirecTV, Dish Network, Comcast, Cablevision, Cox, Verizon FiOS, and ATT U-verse.
The biggest distributor missing from the list is Time Warner Cable, which is promoting its own app that allows streaming of some channels. Time Warner Cable has also not supported HBO GO, the app that allows on-demand viewing of films and shows on HBO, which like Turner is a unit of Time Warner. Though they sound related, Time Warner and Time Warner Cable have been separate companies since splitting in March 2009.
HBO GO has already been used by millions of people since its widespread introduction early this year. Like the Turner apps, it is promoted on HBO’s main channel; Mr. Koonin recalled seeing a commercial last month that said a coming episode of “Entourage” was already available via the HBO GO app. He logged on to watch it right away, and “it made that iPad more valuable,” he said.
Turner’s campaign includes both humorous instances of people watching shows on phones and tablets and tutorials about how to do so. In one spot, Mr. O’Brien, whose talk show is on TBS, comes trudging onto his late-night stage for a promotional shoot in a suit of iPads, iPhones and BlackBerrys — the joke being that someone was confused about the purpose of the shoot.
“Watch any device on Conan,” the director says.
A narrator then explains more accurately: “Now watch Conan and all your favorite TBS shows wherever, whenever you want.”
The cast of TNT’s “Leverage” stars in another spot, taking turns singing lines from the Richard Marx song “I’ll Be Right Here Waiting for You.” Television episodes, viewers are told, are waiting for them anytime on the Web.
The spots were conceived by the Grey Group, a unit of the WPP Group, and produced with the help of Turner. Those that include Mr. O’Brien were directed by Bryan Buckley, who was also responsible for the Conan-in-India commercial for American Express last year.
Some of the spots will be shown during Turner’s baseball playoff broadcasts, which usually attract a big audience.
The campaign also includes a longer spot, to be posted on YouTube, which details how to download the apps and log in to a participating cable or satellite company. It is not always easy at first; the spot advises people to have their cable bill handy for their account number. “We’ll run that on air also when we have long-form opportunities,” Mr. Koonin said.
Critically for Turner, the online streams of its television episodes include the same commercials as the traditional telecasts, and Nielsen includes the online streams in its commercial ratings that include three days of playback, which is standard in the industry.
“Meaning, if they watch ‘The Closer’ on Wednesday on their iPad, we get as much credit as if they watched at 9:06 on Monday night,” Mr. Koonin said.
Some shows on TBS and TNT, like repeats of the sitcom “Friends,” are not available for online viewing. “Some deals that were done many years ago never contemplated these kinds of rights,” Mr. Koonin acknowledged. But he added, “for the most part, the shows that are hits, they are on there.”
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