"Jericho" Fans Send Over Nine Tons of Nuts to CBS

nuts-to-CBS writes "After presenting 'Jericho' fans with a cliffhanging season finale, CBS promptly cancelled the program. The shocked fans quickly banded together, many using CBS' own public "Jericho" discussion forum, and began brainstorming on ways to convince the network to bring back the show for a second season. A plot point in the final episode of "Jericho" involving the expletive "Nuts!" (in reference to an historic conversation between generals) was turned into a campaign to send large quantities of nuts to CBS' NY, LA, and affiliate offices. Fans have sent a total of $26,000 for a pooled campaign hosted at Nuts Online to ship over 19,000 pounds of peanuts to CBS. Other efforts acquired over $9,000 to publish full page advertisements in Variety (National Edition) and The Hollywood Reporter for Tuesday, May 29th. This is expected to become the largest ever fan campaign to bring a television show back from cancellation." There's more about the massive fan rollout below. CBS created rich, interactive content online to accompany their show "Jericho," in order to extend its fan base to the Internet-savvy, TiVo-owning generations. Despite suffering through the all-too-familiar mid-season hiatus employed by many shows, the "Jericho" fan base remained strong throughout the break, partially due to the episodes being posted both for free on the CBS site as well as for purchase on iTunes. "Jericho" returned from the hiatus in the same timeslot occupied by "American Idol." CBS — which apparently still determines programming primarily on Nielsen ratings — decided to drop the show, regardless of the ever-growing and loyal fan base. Nuts Online includes live blogging from Jeffrey Braverman, the company's 26-year old CEO. Jeffrey's company has been shipping up to 5,000 pounds of peanuts a day to the CBS New York headquarters, and has been using their site to describe his experience along the way. Three other fan sites are documenting the progress: CBS Jericho Message Board, Jericho Lives, and Jericho Rally Point. Fans of Roswell were successful in bringing back their favorite program by sending mass quantities of tiny bottles of Tabasco sauce."

Comments

Jericho *was* Nuts

[Anonymous Coward]

First off, I'm sure that the people at CBS are enjoying the free lifetime supply of tasty peanuts. Hopefully they'll send back a thank-you card. Maybe one of those new Star Wars Hallmark cards. (After all, it's the least they can do.)

That being said, Jericho went off the air because the show took a wrong turn at Albuquerque. When it first started, the premise was intriguing. A post-holocaust world from the perspective of those who have no idea what could possibly be going on. It makes for a great setup. The first few episodes were even fairly good, with the early problems from the detonation wreaking all kinds of havoc. After that? Things went downhill.

Pretty soon the show was focusing more on love triangles than it was on the fact that everyone was just trying to survive. Emergencies were regularly forced into the story rather than the characters having to deal with realistic difficulties. There was so much that they could be exploring, yet the show was being "the O.C. after the bomb". (Or whatever the latest "pop" show is for stupid teenagers. Anyone remember that scene from Stargate-SG1 "200"? Yeah, that.)

As interesting as it had been, I just lost interest in the show. Checking my iTunes library, it looks like I stopped at "The Day Before". 13 episodes watched, and I just couldn't stand it anymore. So is it really any surprise that Jericho got cancelled?

I realize that many fans are begging for a conclusion to the cliffhanger, but that will pass with time. Remember the show Sliders? Remember how it died in the 5th season with both the main characters wiped out, Wade killed off in a twisted experiment, the reason for sliding gone, and a hokey story about a mad scientist stuck its the place? The show lost its purpose, yet the producers ended the season with a massive cliffhanger in hopes that fan outcry would bring the show back. And after watching the final episode, you do get a feeling of, "You can't leave it there!"

But in hindsight, it's best that it stayed off the air. There was about a zero point zero zero chance that the O'Connell brothers were going to return to the show, and the writing had been of poor quality anyway. If the show had returned, we would have gotten another season of the show's slow and agonizing death. Why? It was best that it was put out of its misery.

(Of course, the show "jumped the shark" in the third season with the loss of John Rhys-Davies, but at least the "finding Earth" and "looking for Ma and Pa" subplot was interesting.)

So I'm sorry to say this, but let it die. It was a nice try, but hopefully a better show will take its place.

Re:It's a TV Show

[hachete]

Also, whilst tanning, read a fucking book.