Earlier this week, ABC released a short promo for Alex, Inc. titled “Raising a Family.” Four days later, the video has slightly over 7,000 views on the verified TVPromos channel on YouTube. The montage shows Zach Braff’s character trying to balance family life with his new, unproven business initiative. Here, it appears that ABC is trying to market the show towards a familial audience, as it tries to relate to viewers who struggle with the challenges of raising children. Such a tactic may prove valuable, as the show can simultaneously market to families and those who are interested in technology. By having a show that simultaneously focuses on two distinct subjects, there is more flexibility to appeal to audiences with broad interests. If the program experiences success at ABC, it can partially be attributed to the fact that the show’s concept and marketing has engaged both podcast devotees and families.

Good Girls are making sure to use their star power the week before the show’s release. Parks n Rec alumni Retta is front and center this week. NBC is making use of both her star power by sending her out to do interviews. Both of the interviews Retta was involved with centered around her rise from being a background character to a leading role. The first interview put her in the cover of backstage magazine titled “Retta’s Rebirth”, while the second one was an interview with Variety.com. Retta has also increased the mentions of Good Girls in twitter with the premiere of the show less than a week away. She posted a reaction video of herself reacting to the show’s billboard, a teaser of the show, and reposted the Good Girl’s twitter page post. Good Girls’ twitter account followers number has remained steady.

ABC’s Alex, Inc. has the opportunity to achieve initial success through simply its subject matter. Given the recent surge in the popularity of podcasts, there is opportunity for the program to capitalize on this trend. ABC is not the only company attempting to capitalize on the newfound podcast craze, though, as HBO, FOX, and others have television shows based on podcasts currently in development. Such action illustrates that a variety of networks recognize the potential for monetary success with shows focused on podcasts. While the majority of these in-development shows are adaptations of these podcasts, Alex, Inc. seems to be the only one that depicts the story behind the podcast, making the concept itself the focus of the narrative. It will be interesting to see whether this unique take on adapting a podcast translates well to network television and draws enough of an audience to make the show a success.

Something interesting I learned this week about the show is that even though it has yet to formally premiere on NBC, aside from its preview a few weeks ago, fans still have the opportunity to view the first three episodes of the show right now on Hulu. This is an interesting thing as it shows that NBC may be concerned about the audience size for live airings of the show and it trying to target the streaming audience by giving them early access to the show.

This will potentially help NBC to connect with a wider audience since much of the younger generation does not watch live airings but rather prefers to stream content. Additionally it may be an additional revenue stream for NBC or Hulu depending on their content deal as people interested in early access to the show may sign up for Hulu if they do not yet have subscriptions.

One concern could be that NBC is not properly advertising this as I have not seen on any of the show commercials a promotion for the three episodes being available on Hulu.