Matlock star Kathy Bates is 77. And the inaugural “CBS Birthday Salute” is celebrating the Academy Award winner’s June 28 birthday with everybody. The historic broadcast network began teasing the multiple Emmy winner’s birthday as early as June 13. Its social media platforms even dubbed themselves “Kathy Bates Stan Account.” Two days before her birthday, Jason Ritter, Bates’s Matlock co-star, appeared in a reminder on CBS social platforms.
Lovebombing of the legend officially kicked off at 7 a.m. ET/4 a.m. PT in a series of commercial breaks during live programming and across multiple CBS platforms, including Paramount+, Instagram, X, TikTok and Facebook. Tributes from Bates’s many costars, including Bad Santa 2’s Billy Bob Thornton, A Family Affair castmate Brooke Shields, and Tammy co-star Melissa McCarthy, as well as CBS Mornings personalities Gayle King, Nate Burleson, and Vladimir Duthiers, are among the many highlights from the celebration ending at 11 p.m. ET/8 p.m. PT. Fans also get in on the action, with one Kathy Bates admirer memorably dressing up as her iconic Misery character.
“We were just brainstorming ideas of what we can do in between our shows to make the experience of watching CBS just more fun and we thought, ‘what if we started to celebrate some of the birthdays of our talent?’” said Mike Benson, who has served as president and chief marketing officer at CBS since 2019, exclusively with The Hollywood Reporter. “Someone had noticed Kathy Bates’s birthday was coming up.”
Celebrating Bates — who surprised both critics and fans in her starring role in the hit series “Matlock” as a lawyer who revives her career in her 70s posing as Madeline “Matty” Matlock to punish the big firm she blames for her daughter’s death due to an opioid overdose — took off like wildfire.
“We’ve been working on it for about three months now,” said Benson. “And the reason it’s taken so long is it took a lot of coordination. We were surprised at how many different individuals around the company wanted to participate in it.”
“When we started to develop it, we went to news, we went to sports, we went to a variety of different divisions of the company, and they all wanted to participate,” he continued. “We brought in a lot of different partners to help us build it. So, at first, it just started as something that we thought would be small, and then it just started to grow into something bigger.”
More than two dozen stars and personalities created videos for Bates. Social amplification also takes place across other social channels within Paramount+, which also features Matlock character-themed Avatars. To celebrate Bates, CBS partners Candier (IG: @the_candier) are offering a $10 discount for their birthday candle and Paper Source (IG: @papersource) created a custom reel of envelope art inspired by her Matlock character. CBS is also making $10,000 worth of charitable donations in her honor.
Still, the network’s collaboration with the Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles might just be the most heartwarming. Emmy-winning composer/songwriter Greg O’Connor created the music whileErik Weiner wrote the colorful lyrics filled with tidbits from the star’s storied career. “In Matlock, you’ve got them fooled/For you we are so thankful/You crushed it hard in Misery/Including James Caan’s ankles” goes one. “From About Schmidt to Waterboy/Your range is so breathtaking/An Oscar, Emmys and Golden Globes/Your mantle must be breaking” is another.
“From a marketing perspective, I want to surprise and delight the audience,” said Benson of this and other efforts like “CBS postcards,” which are “just really beautiful scenics from around America” that run randomly between programming.
Benson’s hope is to “surprise the audience so that [their viewing experience] doesn’t feel like the same old CBS that maybe they’ve seen in the past” as well as “to bring a fresh but also fun and very accessible, relevant and modern approach to who and what CBS is all about.”
Bates, Benson feels, is emblematic of that effort. “She’s a wonderful individual. She is someone who is absolutely a joy to work with and gracious, and she’s part of our CBS family. And the thing that we really want people to feel, whether you are seven or 70, it doesn’t matter, is you’re part of the family. It’s fun to be able to celebrate Kathy in a way that’s special,” he said. “It really has been a fun project to put together and we’re hoping people love it.”
