“So, where are we on getting Spader?”
Fred Graver, Twitter’s head of TV, is hunkered down in a cramped conference room in the company’s New York office with a tiny team of two. Outside, sales and marketing staffers gear up for a Summer Friday confab, but Graver isn’t thinking about margaritas. He’s thinking about how to nab James Spader. The actor is returning to television this fall as a creepy criminal mastermind in a highly anticipated show called The Blacklist. Graver wants Spader on Twitter posting behind-the-scenes photos from the set, live-tweeting episodes, conversing with fans–and hell, maybe even tweeting creepy criminal-mastermindy things. That would be just fine.
Graver’s goal is clear: Make sure that all the people who enjoy television take to Twitter to enjoy it even more. When viewers watch TV–their smartphone or tablet at their side–using Twitter to chat with their virtual friends about a program, it creates “the world’s biggest couch,” he says. And who better to have gossiping on the sofa with you than the star of the show?
Spader tops a very long list of celebs whom Graver is stalking. While nearly every TV program these days flashes something Twitter related on-screen, most of these feeds read like the PR–tinged musings of a social media intern. “People follow people,” Graver says, a mantra he drops on television executives early and often. Twitter has won over the digital marketing departments of every network; now it needs their stars. Lara Cohen, who joined Twitter two weeks ago from Us Weekly, already has one triumph to report. “Allison Janney signed on today!” she says. Janney, best known for her role on The West Wing, stars in the new CBS sitcom Mom; her first tweet was to thank Cohen for her help.
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