Knight Rider Rebirth Chat
We were invited today to speak on 168 Hours of TV - Jeremy Scott’s show on Blog Talk Radio.
Included below is the 12 minute excerpt of that interview, and is a pretty decent primer for what the show on Wednesday is all about. We discuss the new series, knight rider in general and the history of this website.
You can also listen to the complete episode on their website. Thanks to Jeremy for reaching out to us, we had a lot of fun!
KITT Bytes of the Week
When Knight Rider news falls through the cracks, our weekly KITT Bytes sweeps them up:
- MJKnight’s somewhat weekly YouTube feature Knight Watch posted his 22nd issue and talks about “A recap of the road to the new series that will Premier next week September 24th at 8 PM only on NBC.”
- Deanna Russo’s official website has been given a slight kick ass makeover. Gone are some of the softer images that greeted you when you first loaded the site - now it’s 110% Sarah Graimen badass. [Knight Rider Archive]
- SciFiWire , Interviewed Justin Bruening and Deanna Russo the discussion gets into their martial-arts tranning. Bruening warned about crossing Deanna: “To borrow a phrase, I pity the fool who ever tries to hurt her.” [Knight Rider Archive]
- If you have seen the premier episode of Knight Rider, we suggest you check out out forum as there is alot of fun discussions going on such as this photoshop challenge, HUD Discussion, New VOX, Turbo Boost as well as the episode discussion itself.
- Knight Rider 2008 actor Paul Campbell was spotted last week racing the Nautica Malibu Triathalon. Campbell raced as part of a relay to raise money for The Children’s Lifesaving Foundation
- NBC announced that they will have a digital compliment to the Knight Rider series this fall which includes: Fans will be able to investigate the back stories of some of their favorite characters in the Knight Industries micro-site. Plus, a new behind-the-scenes production blog featuring the writing staff and Billy’s Blog will provide even more insight. Additionally, users will find an all-new KITT game and interactive Attack KITT and KITT cave.
- Stu Phillip’s CD is now available on iTunes. Containing 40 DRM tracks from the early episodes of the series, it costs you only .99.
- We will be on 168 Hours of TV this afternoon at approx 5:30EST to discuss the rebirth of Knight Rider. Tune and call in!
- It was revealed that the KITT being stolen in Toronto last week was just part of E!’s promotion for the series, details that we’ve included after the jump. But below you can see KITT being spotted in the Ikea parking lot below.
E! Announces Integrated Fall Marketing Campaign
E!, launches its fall marketing campaign this week and focuses on the premiere of 80’s icon Knight Rider. The campaign also highlights the launch of two new comedy series Worst Week (Monday, September 22) and Kath & Kim (Thursday, October 9) as well as returning favourites: Extreme Makeover Home Edition (Sunday, September 28), The Biggest Loser - Families (Tuesday, September 16), How I Met Your Mother (Monday, September 22) and My Name is Earl (Thursday, September 25).To accelerate the steadily building buzz around the premiere of the Knight Rider series, last week E! Everything Entertainment brought the star of the show, the new and improved KITT, to a number of high profile events and heavy traffic locations in Toronto including the Virgin Music Festival, where fans were able to have their picture taken with the legendary car. Last Friday, the final day of KITT’s celebrity tour, crowds of Knight Rider enthusiasts were left stunned when a man ran out of the crowd, dove into KITT and screeched off. Intense speculation spread across news outlets and viral communities promoted by links to YouTube with audience cell phone footage of the ‘KITTnapping” action. And now E! is looking for help to find KITT.
Toronto’s “KITTnapping” officially launched a unique viewer engagement promotion whereby fans have a chance to win a brand new Mustang GT Coupe or a number of limited edition Mio Knight Rider GPS units simply by identifying where KITT’s been spotted.
E! is also looking to the public to post their sightings of KITT at eonline.com and watch E! for updated dialy KITT sightings. Viewers will be encouraged to enter their sightings once daily and during the Wednesday, September 24th premiere episode of Knight Rider, when one lucky fan will walk away with a brand new car!
The integrated fall off-air campaign kicks off this week in the major markets of Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver and includes:
Toronto:
•Subway hub station domination - six key station platform pillars will be dominated with key E! show messaging to take advantage of large traffic flow hubs with multiple impression messaging. Launches: week of Sept 15th x 4 weeks.
•Subway station pillars layered with cherry picked, horizontal billboards located within proximity to these key high traffic subway stations to reach commuters upon entry and exit. Launches: week of Sept 15th x 4 weeks.
•Large space ads in Metro commuter paper provide further impact and dominate commuters with messaging for key programs; Knight Rider, Extreme Home Makeover, The Biggest Loser, How I Met Your Mother, My Name is Earl.
Calgary:
•Horizontal billboards launch week of September 15th x 4 weeks along with a wrap of the Calgary Herald on September 22nd creating awareness of all new and returning E! signature hits like Knight Rider, Extreme Home Makeover, The Biggest Loser, How I Met Your Mother, My Name is Earl.
Other Media Support:
•Aggressive weight levels of radio in Toronto, Vancouver & Calgary, will compliment the media efforts starting the week of September 15th x 10 weeks
•In addition to large space ads in newspaper in all markets (Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver); E! has IPG ads in Alberta and BC to communicate the premieres of key programming.
•Rounding out this integrated support campaign will be the cross promotion of key E! shows on all Canwest web properties to ensure breadth of coverage.
Paul Campbell: On-Set Exclusive
The responsibility of much of the light hearted commedy, as well as helping KITT save the day, falls to Billy Morgan (played by Paul Campbell) who is the head research technician at Knight Industries. We spoke with Paul a bit about his roll, and got quite a few chuckles out of our time with him.
Note that some of this interview, as well as Smith Cho’s interview, has been held to a later date due to revealing information about a future episode.
[Watch our interview on YouTube]
Many thanks to Paul, Smith, Bruce, Yancey and Sydney for spending some of their limited time with us! We still have more to come, so check back!
Press Kit: First Looks
Rounding out our coverage of the NBC press kit is a couple of short 1 minute first looks at Knight Rider. These clips played in movie theaters, taxis and many other places over the last few weeks. The first one is about the series itself, while the second gets into Justin learning to stunt drive.
In order to save on page load times for those with smaller connections, the videos are after the jump!
Press Kit: Interviews
From NBCs press kit we have a number of onset interviews to share with you. Included are Justin Bruening, Deanna Russo, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Bruce Davison, Yancey Arias, Smith Cho, Paul Campbell, Gary Scott Thompson and Elan & Rajeev Dassani.
In order to save on page load times for those with smaller connections, the videos are after the jump!
Sydney Tamiia Poitier: On-Set Exclusive
As one of the four cast members from the original February pilot, Sydney Tamiia Poitier is back as FBI Agent Carrie Rivai. We had the pleasure of interviewing Sydney before the two hour pilot, so we were able to talk to her more now about where her character has come from since then - and why she’s in the SSC.
[Watch our interview on YouTube]
Tomorrow we will have our interview with Paul Campbell!, but for now - here is a preview after the jump!
It’s the Ultimate Car and the One Man Fast Enough to Handle It
Two more commercials coming your way via NBC. The one at the top shows the complete Turbo Boost for the first time on network television - pretty crazy that they let that one out, but I guess if it’s online everywhere now anyway. The second video lets us know that the only thing that can give an ex army ranger (Mike) more muscle is KITT.
[Watch on first video YouTube]
Watch first episode on Knight Rider Online!
We’ve been following the coverage of the first episode’s online premier all day - and now that the episode is finally on Hulu, we are able to stream it for your direct from our site! Please check it out and enjoy!
Let us know in our forum or chat room how you feel about it, let your voices be heard!
The Wait is Over
While “The Wait is Over” is the theme of the video we are highlighting above, this statement is very true for viewers across the US. With a week to go for the official broadcast premier, starting tomorrow many outlets will be offering a free “Online Premier” for the Season 1 premier of Knight Rider.
Entitled Knight in Shinning Armor, it picks up in real time from where we saw our characters in February, some 7 months later. We have seen the synopsis of this episode, but here is what is more important: where to find it.
Starting approximately noon EST tomorrow, Hulu, NBC, iTunes, IMDB and Amazon UnBoxed will provide free streams and or downloads of the first episode of Knight Rider. iTunes will even give the episode to us in HD for free - very cool.
Be sure to check these links tomorrow - and let us know if you get one to work!
- NBC NOW AVAILABLE
- Hulu
- iTunes
- IMDB
- Amazon Unboxed NOW AVAILABLE
Tomorrow is shaping up to be a very interesting day!
**UPDATE** We’ve been informed via the forums that Amazon is first to live with the premier episode!
**UPDATE 12:30EST** Episode now live on NBC.com as well
Yancey Arias: On-Set Exclusive
Yancey Arias comes to Knight Rider very eager to play the role of Alex Torres. His character is in charge of the Satellite Surveillance Center (SSC) or what everyone else likes to call the KITTCave.
In real life, Yancey created a charity called Lives to Save Foundation. Started in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the foundation gives donations to those families in need.
[Watch our interview on YouTube]
Tomorrow we will have our interview with Sydney Tamiia Poitier, but for now - here is a preview after the jump!
