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Television Show Politics

Monday, May 21st, 2007
at 2:14pm

Lisa Coultrup needed my help:

Hi, Chris.

Since you have such a huge readership, I thought you might be just the person who can help us.

I am a fan of the CBS show Jericho. If you have not heard, CBS decided to cancel the show and leave us hanging in the lurch as to what happened — as if the tape suddenly broke, no ending… or closure at all. One week before the show, the producers were mentioning how the second season would be great, etc. Then on the 17th, CBS announced that, due to not-so-great ratings, it was canceling the show. (if you want to and have never seen Jericho, check it out at innertube or iTunes) We fans over at the official forums have begun a huge protest; there is a campaign to send CBS email, faxes, letters, and, best of all, PEANUTS to their offices (a reference to a character’s story about WWII).

There are also many YouTube videos going up, some of which are totally the best things I have seen in a long time. There are tons more than what I have listed in my playlist.

Listen, I can go on forever with this story, but it’s probably easier to have you go to the forums and check this out if you think you might want to help us publicize this effort. CBS is our main target of attack, but we need more public knowledge for our online petition (which sits at 53,070 — on Wednesday the 16th at noon, we sat at 5,949 names).

I used to really enjoy watching your show, I know you to be very involved with many things from the twitters you send and your Web site, but if you could see your way to helping us get this news out to the public, that would be so awesome. I am a 44-year-old mom, so don’t think I am some kid with nothing better to do. I am sick and tired of reality TV, as are the many thousands of folks over at the forums and at the many blogs and Web sites set up to save Jericho. We only have until June from what we hear but that is too close. Please help us in this fight, Chris, if you can.

Thanks for your time and for reading this.

So, maybe we take the idea of “TV” online - live or taped?

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6 Comments

Jericho~ On~ CBS

November 30th, 1999
at 12:00am

wide, who can no doubt come up with a way to see what I watch each week, let us tell you ourselves. No more faulty formulas for viewer numbers please, because this time you screwed up big time! just my 2 cents worth. I want to say a huge thanks to Chris Pirillo who let our story be told over on his blog,

Joost Schuur

May 21st, 2007
at 2:49pm

I enjoyed Jericho too, but campaigns to save a show after it’s been canceled _never_ work (Futurama is the exception to the rule). When a live action show is canceled, something else gets its slot, sets are broken down, actors are let go, writers go somewhere else, budgets are reassigned… it’s next to impossible to bring back and all these campaigns will show is how unhappy folks are at a network for killing a show they liked.

In this case, CBS have already gone on record as saying they’ll offer some form of closure to make up for the cliffhanger ending:

http://www.syfyportal.com/news423672.html

What people really should rally together over is the trend of cliffhanger endings at season finales. This is not the first show that has left people hanging because the producers didn’t think they might get canceled and their overarching vision for the story was never revealed.

Perhaps with today’s webisode trend, there’s an opportunity here for shows to be scaled down rather than canceled and order a dozen 5 minute smaller episodes. The production costs wouldn’t be as high, you could limit it to a few characters and still make money through sponsorship.

At _least_ this way you’re not pissing the fans off completely and don’t risk alienating them from future shows on the network.

Lisa Coultrup

May 21st, 2007
at 3:32pm

Thank you so much Chris for this post, it means the world to all of us!

While it is true that this fight looks like an uphill battle ( as in going up Mt. Everest) we are determined to get some kind of resolution, and this posting will help in showing our fight to the world!
Sometimes the empty can that rattles the most does get picked up!
:-)

CBS is Nuts! Bring Back Jericho

May 21st, 2007
at 10:43pm

[...] Via Chris Pirillo, Jericho has been cancelled by CBS in the US. [...]

Craig

May 22nd, 2007
at 8:44am

Thanks for publicizing this, Chris. I agree with Joost about the cliffhanger season endings to an extent, but I don’t mind them when it’s a show I know is coming back.

There are a lot of shows with high production values that seem to have big gaps in between episodes (my favorites among these are Lost, Heroes, Friday Night Lights and, of course, Jericho). I think the networks and the producers of these shows should take a look at what Fox has done with 24. It hurts like crazy to wait until February for a new season to begin, but then it’s an unbroken season that I can enjoy without the hassle of taxing my aging memory to remember all the plot twists. They need to figure out a whole season’s (and beyond when necessary) sequence of events and then get those episodes ready to run without interruption for 3-4 months. Spread them out between the fall and the spring (maybe even summer).

And for crying out loud, don’t put them in the same time slot as another hit show, or at least not one of the same genre. Put them opposite the reality or game shows, or the lame comedies, and let them duke it out.

SocioBiblog

June 9th, 2007
at 5:38am

Ben Brady sent this update: Just thought I’d let you know of a successful campaign to revive the television series Jericho on CBS… Related Content:Television Show PoliticsI Hate IE6!PSP Firmware v2.70She’s AliveIt’s Not an XML Feed!Streets and Trips 2006 Construction UpdateThursday Night Geek Dinner in Palo AltoWindows Vista DriversWWJD?Anybody Tape Jay Leno?

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