Downton Abbey fans, it’s almost time to stock up on Kleenex: the sixth and final season is upon us.

PBS will premiere the show’s last season on Sunday, Jan. 3 at 9 p.m. ET, and hopefully it will answer everyone’s questions: Is Bates really secretly a murderer? Will Lady Edith ever find love and keep it, especially now that she’s a single mom? And will Lady Mary finally hook up with the hot guy from last season who didn’t stick around nearly long enough?

These questions and more should be addressed in the show’s final episodes, but until then PBS and Masterpiece are doing everything they can to keep the series front and center over the holidays.

“One thing we’ve learned over the years is that whether we’re promoting a big Ken Burns event, Sherlock or Downton Abbey, audiences have too many options these days to take anything for granted,” says Jim Dreesen, PBS vice president of content promotion. “Their loyalty to us is divided by their loyalty to a half-dozen other shows. We’re of the mind that we’re going to get one shot at this and one shot only.”

To that end, PBS and Masterpiece started a “month-long courtship” of viewers that ran all through December, says Jennifer Allen, PBS senior director of primetime strategy and advertising.

“We want to make people remember what they love about the show, to tap into that nostalgia and warmth,” she says. “Downton Abbey really does stand as an equal to shows like Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones. That’s the kind of audience it’s attracted and awards it’s won.”

To do that, there’s a few types of “blocking and tackling” the team does to make sure the show gets in front of fans in all the right places. On Dec. 28, the New Yorker will run a custom back cover featuring the show, and on the day of premiere, the Sunday New York Times will be wrapped in Downton Abbey.

On TV, promos for Downton Abbey have appeared or will appear in some of CBS’ most prestigious programs, including The Good Wife, Survivor and in the I Love Lucy Christmas special on Wednesday, Dec. 23. On cable, promos will air on such networks as HGTV, Food Network, CNN and Fox News. Promos also will appear online in such places as Amazon, People Magazine, the New York Times and Hulu.

Downton Abbey also got some time in front of theatre-goers as they anxiously awaited what’s now the biggest movie of all time: Star Wars: The Force Awakens.

“Ideally, promos for Downton will be one of the last things audiences see before the previews start,” says Dreesen.

Downton Abbey’s talent swept New York in December, appearing on ABC’s Good Morning America, NBC’s Late Night with Seth Meyers, CBS’ The Talk and ABC’s The Chew. And PBS decorated an empty storefront at 41st and Broadway with a Downton Abbey set, allowing passers-by to take selfies as they went about their holiday errands.

One of the biggest and most fun activations is the show’s float in the New Year’s Day Rose Parade, which more than 40 million people will see just two days before the premiere. Below is an artist’s rendition of the float:

“The audience for the parade is the perfect match for us,” says Allen, while Dreesen notes that PBS documentary maestro Ken Burns is the Rose Parade’s Grand Marshall this year.

The Rose Parade is a perfect place to showcase social media, with people sharing all sorts of photos of the float. PBS will be live-streaming the float’s progress via Periscope on New Year’s Day, says Kevin Dando, PBS senior director, social media strategy and digital communications, as well as interviewing the float’s architect and streaming that.

Both PBS and Masterpiece have dived headfirst into social media, with Masterpiece launching a podcast, Masterpiece Studio, to showcase its dramas — including Downton Abbey and Sherlock — on Monday, Dec. 21.

In fact, Masterpiece has never really stopped working on social media for the show.

“Even before season five had ended, season six was starting,” says Olivia Wong, senior account executive at Masterpiece. “Leading up to the broadcast, we’ve been able to sling out a whole slew of rich short form video content that we’ve produced over the past five years as a nostalgic reminder to all of the fans about the things they loved about the series.”

Masterpiece creates content to live across social media, including on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Vine and Pinterest. Last season, Downton Abbey gathered 24 million impressions on Twitter during its nine-week run, and landed in the top five of Nielsen’s Twitter TV ratings for seven of those nine weeks.

“One of the things we’re able to do on both accounts — PBS and Masterpiece — is look at the conversation and amplify it,” says Dando, noting that people are being encouraged to tweet at #DowntonPBS. “We’re always looking at the conversation, especially during any live-tweeting.”

This is just the beginning of the end, and PBS is saving some of its budget to promote the show’s March 6 finale, which is expected to draw huge numbers. Promos will appear in ABC’s Oscars telecast in six or seven key markets, says Allen.

And there’s no need to be too sad, points out Dreesen: “This isn’t really goodbye for us. These days, shows don’t end. They go off to these over-the-top places like Amazon and Roku and live forever.”

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