"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."

This got by the editors?

[MonGuSE]

I'm sorry but the campaign to save the StarTrek Enterprise series for a 5th year was far larger. This quick search garnered a BBC News story showing over 3million US raised and if my memory serves correctly the fans were close to 20 million before being told that there was no way ?paramount? would run another series without an industry backer. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/4312767.s tm [bbc.co.uk]

Its not going to waste

[Anonymous Coward]

They will be donated to City Harvest, a New York-based program that takes excess food and distributes it to community food programs for the poor, according to Phil Gonzales, a CBS spokesman. Some of the nuts are also on their way to troops in Iraq and Afghanistan through the Staten Island Homefront Project. [go.com]

What about farscape?

[Da w00t]

"This is expected to become the largest ever fan campaign to bring a television show back from cancellation."

I've never seen Jericho, and I bet the series is great, (I just watch very little TV nowadays) but

This makes me wonder how this will compare to the "save farscape" media frenzy that lots and lots of 'scapers took action to get Sci-Fi's rectal-cranial inversion syndrome diagnosed, and cured. It was on CNN Headline News [imdb.com] for chrissakes!

All in all, I'll probally check out Jericho now. Good luck to all the Jericho fans, I hope you get your show back.

Mod up

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Parent is right. And this is no ordinary "don't you have better things to do with your time/money" troll. It's not like it's that much more effort to send food to the needy via a charity. After all, it is only a TV show...

The "Nuts" reference - Battle of the Bulge

[Etherwalk]

Brigadier General Anthony McAuliffe was the acting commander of the 101st Airborne Division in the Battle of Bastongne [wikipedia.org] during the Battle of the Bulge [wikipedia.org]. The 101st was surrounded, outnumbered, and unable to get resupply by air. When Axis forces demanded their surrender, McAuliffe's one-word response was "Nuts."

Obviously, after sixty years, this necessarily led to trying to save a canceled show with peanuts.

Re:Congrats to the NutsOnline guy

[kinabrew]

Actually, on the nutsonline page, he says

Hello Jericho lovers!

From a few orders, to a few more orders, to a few emails, to a lot more emails, we suddenly found ourselves in the middle of a campaign to support a show we had never even watched before

Re:Jericho *was* Nuts

[PopeRatzo]

And what impact would post-apocalyptic panic have on rural thanksgiving celebrations?

Actually, that doesn't sound too bad, but the "Blown-the-hell-up-90210" part sounds painful.

When I saw the stories about this show before it came out, I had no doubt that network television would make a hash of it. I've developed a new procedure for any network-or-cable television shows:

I don't watch them. THEN, if I start hearing buzz about them being amazing, I'll go back and download the first few episodes via Bittorrent. If they knock me out, I'll download the rest. Usually, by this time, the show is getting ready to go off the air (ala "Deadwood", "The Wire", etc.). Eventually, I catch up until I get to the point, like now, when I download the latest episode of The Sopranos on Monday morning from my trusty BT client.

It really saves on the cable bill - I don't get one because I don't have cable. Believe me, the worthwhile stuff filters through the great sieve of BitTorrent and I don't find myself on a Saturday afternoon watching some shite made-for-TV nonsense on the Sci-Fi Channel.

Re:Jericho *was* Nuts

[Andy Dodd]

Except that in the second half of the season, the truth about Hawkins began coming out and he was no longer a cryptic "Locke" by any means, including WHY the hell he's in Jericho.

Jericho *was* Nuts

[dutch13]

Thankfully, most of the folks fighting for Jericho are not quitters. Jericho is just a television show. Everyone watches television....we just want to watch something that entertains us. We don't want to be spoonfed crap reality tv. I am tired of seeing shows about doctors and lawyers banging each other. I am tired of watching 6 different versions of CSI or Law and Order. I pay for cable, I would like there to be something that makes you anticipate next week's episode.....without it being about who is banging who. Your grandparents grew up and were entertained by serial dramas on the radio......we just want a decent serial drama in our lives. Lost is fine.....but we liked JERICHO and we are fighting for it. If you are satisfied with bashing people on a website....great, more power to you. We, though, are joining together to try and achieve a change. Sit back and snipe from your computer.....or be a part of something. http://nutsonline.com/jericho [nutsonline.com]

Re:Jericho *was* Nuts

[dwcarless]

1 (and part of 4)) No matter how you cut it, it is a top 50 or top 25 show. At a minimum, it is higher rated than 2/3 of everything else on TV.

2 Nielsen is obsolete because even if one watches on TV, it could be Tivo'd. Nielsen captures an ever DECREASING portion of televsion viewers -- those that actually sit on a couch and watch a show as it airs. New Media viewers don't schedule their time around a network. Nielsen is a dinosaur in the Old Media world.

3 There are no stats to argue this, so we will just have to agree to disagree

4 CBS' crisis is more that 20,000 pounds of peanuts. It is a public releations nightmare. Full page ads are in this coming Tuesday's Variety Weekly and Hollywood Review. News coverage is already jumped to mainstream with ABC and (ironically) all major CBS affliciates running it. Power blogger Michelle Malkin has front paged it, which means Drudge will follow shortly. Love them or hate them, they command 20+ million hits per day between them. CBS is stuck in neutral and cannot pimp their new season lineup until they resolve this.

Re:Jericho *was* Nuts

[darkmeridian]

The parent refers to the following exchange from Arrested Development:

Tobias Fünke: Michael if I may take off my pants and pull my analrapist stocking over my head, I think George Michael may be suffering from what we in the soft-sciences call "Obsessive Compulsive Disorder", or the "The O.C. Disorder."
Michael: Don't call it that.