Fox is entering this fall season guns blazing for one of the most competitive Monday nights in recent memory, setting up the hugely touted Gotham to go toe-to-toe with the likes of ESPN’s Monday Night Football, a double-billing of CBS’ Big Bang Theory and a freshened up The Voice on NBC that has added head-turners Gwen Stefani and Pharrell Williams to the talent pool.

“We’re really cognizant about what kind of season we’re coming into and that Monday night is full of land mines,” said Laurel Bernard, EVP of marketing for Fox Broadcasting Company. “We’re trying to be realistic about expectations but at the same time we’re very enthusiastic because Gotham plays great and it’s bigger and broader than you would expect.”

Fox is the only Big-Four network doling out a brand new show on Monday night, though Gotham is not your typical untested commodity. Of course any Batman spin-off automatically taps into one of the richest pools of built-in fans available, but Gotham extends beyond male-driven comic-book geekery to reach “across all quadrants,” said Bernard. “There’s something for everyone here.”

With its emphasis on the relationship between Det. James Gordon and Bruce Wayne before they were, respectively, a city police commissioner and a crime-fighting superhero, the series has the potential to lure in viewers who don’t even care about Batman, but just like a good story, well told. And with the origin stories of a slew of Batman villains thrown into the mix, Gotham has positioned itself to be not only entertaining and innovative but instructional, giving fresh insight to fans of the familiar characters while giving newbies the chance to literally start at the beginning, and join in whether they’ve been following, say, Poison Ivy all along or not.

Gotham even taps into the young female sector – a rarity for comic book-based projects. Jada Pinkett-Smith’s Fish Mooney was not in the original comic book arc by Bruno Heller from which the show is derived, but was written in for TV and “was immediately knit into the legacy,” said Bernard. “She brings a huge energy… It’s great to help bring women in. She’s a tough girl in a man’s world and people have been really responding to that. She’s going to be a breakout character.”

Still, Fox isn’t taking any chances, and has been pushing Gotham with a thematically appropriate action-packed campaign since the series first made a splash at the upfronts in May. The list of stunts, parties, screenings and other events is too long to place here (and many items on it have been covered on this site previously), but a few of the highlights include:

-A Comic-Con takeover right next to the event’s main convention center replete with a Gotham-themed zip-line and Gotham-branded Uber cars.

-An eye-opening initiative to, as Bernard put it, “speak to the industry” by sponsoring this year’s PromaxBDA Conference opening night party at New York’s Museum of Modern Art.

-A star-studded, red-carpeted, Big Apple premiere of the pilot last Monday that turned the New York Public Library upstairs into Fish Mooney’s atmospheric bar and featured vintage police cars patrolling the streets.

“We love doing that kind of stuff,” said Bernard. “Some of it press-worthy and some of fan-worthy. We like to pull the fans in when they’re not expecting it.”

While Gotham appeals to an array of viewers, Fox has been careful to serve its core audience of comic-book fans, presenting in-depth digital experiences, dynamic mobile offerings and even an online Gotham Chronicle that expands and enriches the world of the show without pandering.

“We need to service that core audience but we try to do it with an eye toward legitimacy,” said Bernard. “We want to keep it in that fan-boy zone, [making sure] that this is content they would be seeking anyway.”

Gotham’s chances at making a dent on Monday night are helped by its placement in front of the well-established Sleepy Hollow, which premieres its second season this Monday, September 22, as well. Together, they form an intriguing blend of mood and mayhem that offers something profoundly different amidst the 8:00-10:00 pm Monday night sports/singing/sitcom glut. It’s hard to say if someone primed to watch Monday Night Football could be swayed to instead tune into dark dramas of superheroes and 18th-century supernatural investigations (though the NFL certainly has not been without its own dark drama as of late), but if nothing else, said Bernard, Fox is aiming to nab those viewers after the fact. An ESPN-located campaign will put promos in front of the sports network’s top-50 local markets, reminding football fans to “set your DVR right now,” said Bernard. “Being cognizant that there’s a lot of audience available on Monday night, but they already have their thing they’re programmed to do… I don’t think any of us expect to deliver our full audience when they turn on the TV at 8:00 any more, but we want to make them feel the heat right down until the end.”

Fox has been particularly vocal about the growing importance of delayed viewership, though the benefits of drawing viewers to Gotham after the fact have more significance than mere numbers. In the long-tail picture, Gotham is the kickoff to, and an important reminder of, a whole week of programming defined by quirky, character-driven storytelling, from comedian John Mulaney’s contemplative multi-camera sitcom Mulaney to Wednesday night’s pediatric cancer ward dramedy Red Band Society.

This day and age, “it’s not just about telling people where or when,” said Bernard, “but reminding them that they were interested in it and that they don’t want to miss it… There’s this added layer of the second-chance window and we want to take advantage of that.”

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