The promotion of the 2nd season of the Showtime series “Masters of Sex” includes a video clip on YouTube titled “Undress Me,” created by the filmmaker Tatia Pilieva.

FOR the marketing executives whose job it is to round up eyeballs to watch television, the summer is turning out to be hazy, crazy, anything but lazy.

A deluge of original programming is replacing many of the reruns that typically dominate schedules this time of year, offering viewers perhaps the most new summertime series since the early decades of the medium, when so-called summer replacement shows filled in for 13 weeks when the networks’ premier programs finished their seasons and went on vacation.

By one count, broadcast networks and cable channels are introducing 88 shows from late May, when the 2013-14 season ended, through late September, when the 2014-15 season will begin. Add the new series on websites like Hulu and YouTube, along with new episodes of streaming video series like “Orange Is the New Black” on Netflix, and “the choices are bountiful,” said Marc Berman, editor in chief of TV Media Insights. “That once-proverbial ‘Gone fishing’ sign in the summer is now a memory.”

“The growing trend of programming on a year-round basis” not only produces “larger tune-in” in the summer, which benefits advertisers, he added, it also “translates into a stronger promotional platform for the fall,” when the television season starts again.

The need to find viewers for all that fresh summer fare is generating a flood of advertising campaigns, in traditional media as well as in newer realms like social  “It’s challenging in a culture with a lot of noise to get attention,” said Don Buckley, executive vice president for program marketing and digital services at Showtime Networks. “You have to find unique ways to reach people.”

For instance, among the commercials, print ads and posters to promote the second season of the Showtime series “Masters of Sex,” which is to begin on Sunday, will be a video clip on YouTube . titled “Undress Me,” created by the filmmaker Tatia Pilieva. “First Kiss,” her video promoting a small clothing line, Wren, has generated almost 85.8 million views on YouTube since March.

In “Undress Me,” 20 strangers are paired, undress each other down to their underwear and go to bed. The action is meant to evoke the research conducted in the 1950s by the main characters of “Masters of Sex,” William Masters and Virginia Johnson, as is the principal artwork for the campaign, which is styled to resemble the racy men’s magazines of the era that were often sold in plain brown wrappers.

A campaign to promote “The Strain,” a new series on the FX cable channel, includes  “It’s probably more important than ever to have the right creative platform,” Mr. Buckley said. “We don’t take anything for granted.”

“Masters of Sex” is one of two series that Showtime, owned by the CBS Corporation, is bringing back on Sunday for a second season, along with “Ray Donovan,” with Liev Schreiber in the title role. Another cable channel, USA Network, is running campaigns for four series that returned for the summer — “Covert Affairs,” “Graceland,” “Royal Pains” and “Suits” — and two, “Rush” and “Satisfaction,” making their premieres on July 17.

“I joke that as a marketer I wish I’d appreciated five years ago, even three years ago, how much easier it was to launch and sustain a show,” said Alexandra Shapiro, executive vice president for marketing and digital at USA Network, part of the NBCUniversal division of Comcast. “To stand out, you’ve got to zag while everyone else is zigging.”

“ ‘Satisfaction’ is a great example of what we need to do now, and will need to do, for all our shows,” she added. To promote that drama, about a couple trying to make marriage work, USA Network has teamed with two nontraditional media companies, HowAboutWe and Vice Media, for efforts like online video and events.

“This is one of our first television-related projects,” said Eddy Moretti, chief creative officer of Vice Media, which also creates content that advertises movies and brands.

He described the three-episode web series that will promote “Satisfaction,” about “sex and relationships in the modern world,” as “additional storytelling inspired by the storytelling of the show.”

“The TV marketing departments are saying, ‘Let’s do something different,’ ” Mr. Moretti said. “I think that’s really cool.”

As appealing as unconventional promotional tactics are, Mr. Buckley of Showtime said, they are “part art, part science.”

Although “we have analytic tools we didn’t have even five years ago to help us find people with the propensity to watch a show,” he added, “we’re flying a little blind because we don’t always have the metrics.”

The result is sometimes two steps forward and a step back. For instance, complaints in Los Angeles about some billboard ads with startling images of a worm in an eyeball — promoting “The Strain,” a horror series that the FX cable channel will introduce on Sunday — led FX to replace them with other ads for the show. Although “we’re not out there looking to upset people,” said Stephanie Gibbons, president for marketing and on-air promotion at FX Networks, part of 21st Century Fox, the series is “not for the faint of heart” and the images “are signaling some people that it’s not for them.”

“When you’re breaking rules,” she added, “there can be some glass on the floor.”

“The Strain” is one of five series FX will introduce this summer, along with “Married,” “Partners,” “Tyrant” and “You’re the Worst.” Television is “definitely a 365-day-a-year business now,” Ms. Gibbons said. “There’s no break, no cycle; it’s a wheel of continuous content.”

“Sometimes,” she added, laughing, “you feel like the hamster within that wheel.”

By Stuart Elliott – New York Times – July 6, 2014