The operative notion expressed by network marketing executives was: leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of promotional ideas. Mr. Earley expanded it, “We were down to pebbles, and we were looking into grains of sand we could turn over.”

Fox went to the old playbook, beginning the bulk of its new shows a week early. That means it had a mostly free shot last week to let viewers sample those shows. And the effort was rewarded. Three new Fox series did relatively well, the comedies, “Dads” and “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” and the drama “Sleepy Hollow.”

The latter was a full-court effort. Fox began promoting “Sleepy Hollow” in May, the day it was announced to advertisers in New York, and it never let up.

Fox set up a representation of the set in Madison Square Park in Manhattan. People could stage a pseudo fight with the Horseman, and Fox would turn it into an image they could send to friends. Actors in headless costumes visited multiple cities and even state fairs. Fox set up green-screen effects at affiliated stations so the local weather forecasters could do their reports “headless” on the night of the premiere.

“We even had Headless walking around Times Square the day of the premiere,” Mr. Earley said. (Over the long promotional period, he developed a first-name-basis relationship with the character.) For “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” a show set in a police precinct, Fox took over the Jay Street subway station and handed out free coffee and doughnuts. The two shows scored well in the areas networks follow before a new season: awareness and intent to view, as measured by Nielsen and other research organizations. Each network watches these figures closely throughout the summer, though they are, most agree, profoundly unreliable.

“When it looks good for our shows, we’re very happy,” Mr. Schweitzer said. “When it doesn’t go well, we say, ‘It’s not right.’ ”

Among the factors affecting awareness and intent to view are familiarity with stars and what is known as “title inflation.” People think they know something about a coming show by its title, even though they do not.