They're pitched day in and day out by PR types touting their network's latest new show.

That makes it pretty hard to get their attention, and even harder to impress them.

Doff your hats then to Fox for doing a bang-up job of it with an alternative media stunt that on some levels was a no brainer--so totally obvious--and yet no less clever for it.

The stunt was for the debut last week of its new drama "Alcatraz," about investigators who track down the prisoners who disappeared from the Rock, as it was known, after it shut down.

Instead of holding the show's premiere at a swanky hotel or big-name theater, the network put the reporters on a boat and ferried them across San Francisco Bay to the actual prison where the drama is set.

The prison, which had been closed in 1963, was tricked out for the writers' benefit.

Upon arriving, the writers were greeted by actors dressed just as the guards would have been when the prison was in use, giving them a sense of what it would have been like for a real prisoner arriving on his first day.

There was a red carpet press line in the old prisoner shower room, then a banquet in the storied prison's mess hall. Writers were invited to pose for mug shots.

They were taken on a nighttime tour of the prison, where they met and heard stories of prison life from four people with first-hand experience with Alcatraz, a former prisoner, two former correctional officers and the daughter of an associate warden, who grew up on the island.

The main event, the show's premiere, was held in the prison's D-block, where the most fearsome prisoners once served their solitary confinement sentences. The guard actors walked the block as the show unfolded to ensure no one escaped.

The stunt worked because it was so creative and so closely related to the show. It got the writers writing or tweeting about the event, which is the aim of any stunt aimed at the press.

Plus, the idea of watching "Alcatraz" on Alcatraz is just plain cool.

"To watch a show about Alcatraz while sitting inches away from Alcatraz's fabled lightless cells is, to say the least, discomfiting," wrote USA Today's Marco R. della Cava.