Old Network Promos for New Fall TV Shows

Although it might be hard for Zoomers to believe, there was a time when there was genuine excitement for the new fall television season on the networks. Promos for new shows often started airing as early as July and would continue through August right up the debut of the new shows in September and October. Here are three promos for classic shows from the past.



This is the first ever promo for the now legendary show Star Trek. It is notable for two reasons. First, it feature the now famous promotional artwork created by James Bama. Today James Bama may be best known for the covers he painted for the reprints of the Doc Savage novels published by Bantam and the artwork on the boxes of Aurora's classic Universal Monster model kits, but he also created promotional art for television shows. Second, the promo is notable for giving the wrong premiere date for Star Trek. The show would actually debut on September 8 1966 rather than September 15 1966, as a part of a special preview of the show. Tarzan, starring Ron Ely, debuted the same night as part of a special preview


Designing Women debuted twenty years after Star Trek in 1986. This promo is a bit more sophisticated than the first Star Trek promo, as we get to hear from the actual characters on the show.



This is an early fall promo for ER. It is notable that it starts off by mentioning Hill Street Blues and L.A. Law, two critically acclaimed NBC shows. ER would receive its share of critical acclaim. It would also become the most successful drama of the Nineties. It ultimately lasted 15 seasons.

One fall promo I wanted to share here was one of the notorious fall promos for the 2002 television series Firefly. Quite simply, the early promos totally mischaracterized the show.  Indeed, it mischaracterized the show's characters. The show's main character, Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion), was described as a "whacked out space cowboy." Wash (Alan Tudyk), the pilot of the ship Serenity on the show, was described as a "flighty pilot." Inara (Morena Baccarin) was called a "cosmic hooker." All of this was set to "Walkin' by the Sun" by Smash Mouth and even featured record scratching of the sort known for rap. It seemed as if Fox was trying to promote Firefly as some sort of off the wall space comedy rather than a serious, often dark sci-fi Western.

The past several years I don't remember seeing that many promos for new fall shows. In fact, the only one I think I have seen the past week is one for The Irrational, starring Jesse L. Martin, on NBC. This wouldn't have been the case in the past. There was a time when by this time of year I would have seen literally dozens of promos for new fall shows. It would seem that the influence of the networks have truly declined and that more and more they are giving way to streaming services.