Fox Show Will Start Worldwide (The New York Times, By Brian Stelter)

Television shows typically have their debuts in the United States first and arrive in other countries later — sometimes months or even years later.

But this week, News Corporation is staging a worldwide premiere of “Touch,” a new drama starring Kiefer Sutherland that celebrates the very kind of interconnectivity that will allow the show to start almost simultaneously in 100 countries and territories. In the United States it will appear on the Fox network on Thursday night; in Canada, on Global Television; in Germany, on ProSieben; in Russia, on Channel One.
The worldwide rollout will allow American viewers to react to “Touch” in almost real time with viewers on other continents and in other languages, presuming, of course, that they are motivated enough to do so.
Executives at News Corporation and its competitors say that “Touch” signifies a new way of doing business that attracts multinational advertisers (Unilever is a sponsor of the series around the world) and attacks online piracy.

To Tim Kring, the show’s creator, the shift is stark. In spring 2007, six months after his show “Heroes” started in the United States, he watched hundreds of “Heroes” fans line up for an event in Paris, even though the show had yet to be seen on television in France.

“Every single person there had seen every episode. They had all gotten it illegally off the Internet,” he said in an interview. It was then, he said, that he realized, “Audiences will find these shows no matter where they are.”

The next season of “Heroes” did have a premiere in several countries at the same time. Since then, there have been a few other concurrent premieres of TV shows in multiple countries, most notably in 2010 when the zombieland drama “The Walking Dead” came out in about 120 countries.

It is not easy to pull off. And it is not the right formula for every TV show, since some shows translate in other countries better than others. But the major media companies that own television studios and networks, most of which are growing faster internationally than they are domestically, are eager to try.

“The world is moving in this direction,” said Joe Earley, the head of marketing and communications for the Fox network, who staged a New York City screening of “Touch” on Sunday that linked, via the Internet, to late-night screenings in Mexico, Italy and Turkey.

On stage with his fellow cast members after the screening, Mr. Sutherland answered questions about “Touch” from viewers in those countries and from Facebook and Twitter participants. He had just flown into New York from Russia, the latest stop on a promotional tour for the show that also took him to London, Berlin and Madrid. Rolling up his sleeves backstage, he said, “I’m so jet-lagged that I think it’s canceled itself out.”

The show is a homecoming for Mr. Sutherland, who starred on Fox’s “24” for the better part of the previous decade. By Monday night, he was back in California to tape the final three episodes of the first season.
Mr. Sutherland and Mr. Earley said that the “Touch” rollout resembled that of a movie in some ways because big-budget movies are often backed by worldwide premieres and tours.

Other studios and networks are also trying to accelerate their worldwide introductions of TV shows, as evidenced this month by the Walt Disney Company’s premiere of the new ABC drama “Missing” in 31 territories four days ahead of the opening date in the United States. ABC’s “The River,” too, came on in eight countries within hours of its start in the United States in February.

So far, the worldwide strategy has been favored for dramas instead of sitcoms or unscripted shows. The story lines on “Touch,” a one-hour drama, are steered by a young boy who cannot speak, but can see what will happen in the future. Mr. Sutherland plays the boy’s father. Fox showed the first episode last January as a preview and had about 12 million viewers, a promising number. It is starting, or restarting, the series on Thursday night to take advantage of an “American Idol” lead-in.

But that is just in the United States, which is just a sliver of the show’s overall introduction. In many parts of the world, it will be shown on one of the satellite channels operated by Fox International Channels, a unit of News Corporation. In other parts, it will be shown on unaffiliated channels that have acquired the show.
On Facebook, where conversations between people in different languages can now be automatically translated, the fan page for “Touch” has customized updates for different territories of the world. (The page has only 175,000 fans to date. Many other TV shows have millions.)

The company says that Mr. Sutherland’s tour and the screenings of “Touch” were made possible by Unilever, the consumer products maker that is the global sponsor of the show. The companies declined to say how much Unilever paid, but Jean Rossi, the president of Fox One, the News Corporation unit that orchestrated the deal, said “we think it’s a real template for us going forward in categories like automotive.”

For Unilever, “the increasing globalization of the content people have access to every day” is a “fantastic opportunity,” said Keith Weed, the company’s chief marketing officer. He said that “Fox was looking for a partner who could act at scale across multiple markets.”

Unilever’s products are not placed in the show itself. They are advertised alongside it. Since the company is pitching different brands alongside the drama in different countries, “your step-and-repeat wall’s got to look different in different markets,” Mr. Earley said, referring to the red carpet area where sponsor logos are visible behind the arriving celebrities.

So in Berlin, there were logos for Rexona brand deodorant behind Mr. Sutherland; in London, there were logos for Sure; and in New York, logos for Degree Men.