Defying Gravity is a cracking SF show with a stronger than most concentration on the human side of the drama (so there’s little in the way of aliens, warp drives, stargates and so on) that I’ve blogged about elsewhere on how good it is and why everyone should give Defying Gravity a chance.

Anyway, the sets are now being pulled down, even though the US is still to air the last few episodes starring Ron Livingston. If the ratings were good enough elsewhere, who knows, perhaps series creator James Parriot will get a chance to finish his story (greenscreen tech for the sets?).

If so, here’s how I would pitch to the show’s publicist Nicole Marostica (as well as James Parriott and the exec team of Michael Edelstein, Brian Hamilton, Michael Chechik and Ron French) about how it should be PR’d and marketed to stand a better chance (note, none of this is indepth, it’s just off the top of my head):

• Set up a fake website for ISO, the astronaut business that seems to be the NASA of the future. Keep it populated with content, including blogs from mission control. Update as the show updates, put in easter eggs like backdoor access for the stuff the public in Defying Gravity don’t know but the viewers do.
• Also set up a fake newspage for the British Broadcasting Network (it’s one of the channels featured in the show) and also use that to show a timeline between the present and the future. Also set up fake websites for each country which has an astronaut on the voyage.
• Set up a fake conspiracy site as well.
• Set up fake fansites for each of the astronauts as well.
• Get an iPhone app that – as well as talking about the show – offers real-time updates from the ‘mission’. Just text but again it’s involvement. Also develop it for Android and Pre. You could do Twitter as well, but that might break the fictional reality. After all, will be microblogging in 2050s?
• Desktop pics of some of the beautiful shots – especially of the spaceship
• Get Space.com to run a little sidebar of ‘news from the future’ as a piece of sponsored fun, looking at the space developments of that era.
• Offer two key episodes as free downloads from iTunes and make sure everyone knows about it.
• Get ABC to run the show from the first episode again, a full run at one time slot. Warn people that this is their only chance to save the show.
• The day after the last ep airs, get a decent DVD/Blu-Ray box set out there with extras and emphasise that month 1 sales will play a part in determining the fate.
• Send the full run to every TV reviewer and blogger they can find – before the new eps start. Warn that it’s a slow burn kind of show but by hour 8 it’s really all guns blazing (for those who moan about the running time point out that The Wire took longer for most to get into) and ask them to watch it all.
• Send out freebies like gooey copies of Beta and Gamma, ISO t-shirts
• During every show, have a member of crew on Twitter tweeting about it/liveblogging. Also have podcasts available right away as commentary like Ron Moore did for huge runs of Battlestar Galactica with the writer and someone else.
• Have someone blog from the set, dropping hints and teases.
• Similarly, have a video (or audio) podcast from a group of scientists talking about some aspect of the science relevant to that episode.
• Run a competition: best person to write a blog about what the future will be like gets a set visit.
• Also, run another competition and the prize is dinner with one of the cast.
• Encourage fanfic. Not everyone likes it (I don’t) but if you get people doing that, it can expand the interest in the show.
• Get some writers who would pull in a crowd. Get Neil Gaiman and Warren Ellis (I see a lot of similarities between Warren’s Orbiter and Defying Gravity) as well as asking Joss Wheddon if he would like to direct a show.
• Run the BBC show – Space Odyssey: Voyage to the Planets – that this was based on as well. Cross-promote during and after.
• Trailers on YouTube. Don’t just Hulu it.
• Get the cast to blitz the hell out of every media opportunity. Put them everywhere.
• Use the strengths and weaknesses of each character/incident to specific interest groups, get them involved. Disability at work, abortion, religion in space, drunk driving, abuse – these issues all come up.
• Tie up more with the likes of NASA and other existing space groups.
• Get the show creator to be talking about relevant space issue like
• Find ways of getting the online fans and TV bloggers/reviewers into the background of the show. Have them on screen as b/g characters.
• Take the show’s title literally and offer a few rides on a vomit comet.
• If there’s a shuttle launch or anything similar, work with NASA on an outreach scheme for reviewers and bloggers.