Dear Colleagues:

We have been working on a new CBS Cares CASA public service announcement (PSA) featuring William Petersen, who stars as Gil Grissom in CBS TV’s top rated series CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. In addition to the PSA, CBS has offered to auction on eBay a prop from the show—a miniature of Grissom’s office, with all the funds going to National CASA. The miniature is valued by CBS at $25,000, the cost to build it. For those of us who don’t follow broadcast TV, CSI has been ranked as the number one or two show on TV for the last seven seasons. The average audience for CSI is 16 million viewers, and Nielsen Ratings projects 22 million viewers will be watching CSI’s season premiere next week.

I am very happy to tell you that a 10-second PSA promoting CASA volunteer advocacy and our eBay auction will be airing during CSI’s season premiere next Thursday, Sept. 27. The show airs at 9:00 p.m. In addition to the 10-second eBay CASA ad, we have produced both a 30-second and a 10-second CASA CBS Cares PSA featuring William Petersen. CBS will be placing these PSAs into network rotation shortly.

What’s more, eBay will be featuring our CASA auction on their website’s home page. Please note they have a rotating front page system, so you may not see it every time you go to eBay. Finally, next week eBay will be sending a blast email to 6 million of its subscribers featuring a link to our CASA auction page.

Please share this information with your staff, volunteers, board members and other supporters. Thank you for all your good work on behalf of children.

Warm regards,

Jim Clune
Chief Communications Officer