"Jericho" Fans Send Over Nine Tons of Nuts to CBS 408
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."
Jericho *was* Nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
What a waste of food. (Score:4, Insightful)
It's a TV Show (Score:2, Insightful)
1) Going to the gym
2) Taking a loved one out to dinner
3) Taking up art
4) Relaxing with friends over the internet
5) Fixing some of those pesky things around the house
6) Getting a dog for companionship instead of a television
7) Volunteering for experiments on drugs to treat obsessive compulsive disorder
8) Going for a walk in the woods and experiencing nature
9) Getting a tan
There are so many other things to do in life that worry about a man soap opera.
M
would poor people in Darfur eat peanuts? (Score:2, Insightful)
Might poor people in Darfur like to have this food (Score:0, Insightful)
and i would feel very different about this if Jericho was some form of high art or something that uplifts the human spirit or culture...that is also a good use of resources...but it isn't. It's a shitty tv show that people are mindlessly addicted to, just most of the rest of shit on tv.
Re:It's a TV Show (Score:4, Insightful)
11. Various charity organizations
12. Protest something that matters
and of course
13. Profit
Re:Jericho *was* Nuts (Score:5, Insightful)
I did watch the finale just to see what if anything had been resolved, and have to admit I was somewhat interested in what would happen, since it was actually about the freaking story the whole show was supposed to be about. But no, they decided to leave viewers with a completely unsatisfying show by wasting episode after episode on farmer love triangles while civil war, military coups, and nuclear terrorism in the continental United States were apparently too boring to be dealt with until well after many people had given up on the issues ever being talked about again.
You know the old joke about IBM marketing would sell sushi by calling it "cold, raw dead fish". CBS apparently hired IBM marketing to write this show because they started with an inherently story-filled premise and managed to fill hour after hour with dull flashbacks on generic midwestern family crap that could have been lifted from episodes of Seventh Heaven.
Witness the fall of the Republic (Score:2, Insightful)
After all that, what makes Americans stand up and say "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take it anymore!" but a canceled television show.
My fellow citizens, and all you others, I fear that this may be a grave sign of the failure of the American Experiment.
bah (Score:5, Insightful)
Let it rest in peace (Score:5, Insightful)
*I say something of a high point because upon reviewing, it's clear how much better the early episodes were compared to the later ones. The more we learned about the bombs and the plot behind them, the less interesting the whole story became.
Re:It's a TV Show (Score:2, Insightful)
Jericho was crap. Good riddance.
Re:Witness the fall of the Republic (Score:4, Insightful)
Forgive me if I butchered it.
Re:Witness the fall of the Republic (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's a TV Show (Score:5, Insightful)
The difference is it doesn't cost $19,000 or $26,000 or whatever to get a tan... and if it does, whoever spends that much deserves all the ridicule they get. You could feed a family of four on that much money for a year - and we have no shortage of needy people in this country.
I'm not the kind of guy that goes around pointing out how all these vanity things we do are bad because that money could be better used elsewhere. Hey, if it makes you feel good, then whatever. But still, there's got to be a limit... a point where you say, "you know, this is kind of a ridiculous; there are more important things to worry about." It's not as if these people are getting anything tangible for their investment. They're sending a corporation a bunch of nuts. At least if you spent $26,000 on a tan, you'd still end up with a tan to show for it. These people may as well have just taken all that money and flushed it down the toilet. And that makes the whole thing kind of offensive.
I'll bet they're all really proud of themselves too.
Re:Jericho *was* Nuts (Score:3, Insightful)
See, I had the exact opposite reaction -- I thought the Hawkins character really made the show so silly and artificial that it distracted the writers from the core concept. It's like they had the show ready to go and then they said "But we need a mysterious cryptic character like Locke from LOST!"
Hawkins seemed to function as a Deus Ex Machina whenever the writers couldn't solve a problem or wanted to throw in a curve ball. Nuclear bombs destroying the country and the survivors having to figure out what to do is really plenty interesting as a premise -- we don't need some guy with super-duper hacking powers, a nuclear bomb and ninja skills (who speaks Chinese and works for the Trilateral Commission) to move into town the day before it all happens.
And his whole ex-wife and kids drama was just as dull and uninteresting to me as Jake's girl troubles. Adding a ninja ex-girlfriend back from the dead who may be trying to double-cross him while working for the Man in Black is not interesting, it's unnecessary.
If the writers from Jericho had been in charge of Heroes, they would have spent 7 episodes dealing with Claire and an ex-boyfriend, a pregnancy scare, her mom having an affair, etc. Hiro discovers he can stop time but instead of trying to save the world he spends the first 22 episodes going back to his childhood and crying while watching his father learn to ride a bicycle and wondering why his Mom didn't breast feed him. Syler would have shown up in the last half of the last episode of the season, and the writers would wonder why the show was being canceled.
Holland style Hurricane Protection? (Score:5, Insightful)
Holland style? I would hope not, as Holland doesn't get any hurricanes. That's a good thing too, because we'd be well and truly fucked [wikipedia.org] if we did.
Re:Jericho *was* Nuts (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a TV Show (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Witness the fall of the Republic (Score:2, Insightful)
Fuck Jericho (Score:4, Insightful)
Fuck Jericho.
Interesting premise?
yes
Interesting execution?
Not from the first fucking episode.
Friends of mine were obsessed with Jericho, but jesus, Jericho's writers couldnt write drama for shit.
Not even deaf meghan could save it for me, and she's fucking awesome.
'OMG, the world is coming to an end! but wait, you know what's even more interesting? bland interpersonal drama and bullshit quasi-moralistic plotlines and the melodramitcist of all melodramatic skeet ulrich performances!'
Dont care... dont care... *DONT* *CARE*
Fuck Jericho. With so much *decent* television on, its no wonder that CBS decided to pull a fox and replace a lackluster, if rabidly followed and obsessed over by its 3 fans, serial drama with a REALITY SHOW ABOUT CHILDREN BEING LEFT TO RUN A TOWN BY THEMSELVES. Yes, Jericho got replaced with Lord of The Flies 2: Electric Booglaloo: Lord of The Flies Reality TV.
Yes, this is flamebait.
Yes, I'm an asshole.
But,
No, I'm not wrong.
Fuck Jericho.
Shomer-FUCKING-shabbas!
Re:It's a TV Show (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Fortunately... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a TV Show (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a TV Show (Score:4, Insightful)
Hate Jericho fans? Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
In a very loose comparison, Jericho has also caused many people to stop and think. In a world that is often times uncertain, Jericho took us away from our usual worries and got us to examine ourselves a little more closely.
In a world gone completely mad, the residents of Jericho struggled to keep their humanity about them. What would any of us do in the same situation? The show challenged us to think about just such a possibility. I grew up in the Cold War era and I remember a movie called The Day After. Back then, we had to think about a full out Nuclear War. Today we have to think about dirty bombs. Not much difference is there?
So, while you may hate the fans of this show for trying to save it, remember that a movement like this can show what's best about humanity because we have pulled together people from all over the free world and united them in one common voice. We've done it faster than anyone ever has and in larger numbers as well. CBS wanted to reach the 18-49 market and with new delivery methods like the Internet. They did reach us, but failed to recognize it and canceled our show. Now, we will fight to get it back and no ammount of criticism will impede us from finishing what we started. Keep hating our movement if you must, but we'll keep on truckin'.
20,000lbs of nuts, an ad in Variety and The Hollywood Insider, articles in the NYT, ABCnews.com, E!, syfiportal and countless local media outlets have been the first wave of our voices being heard. We know that they are being heard b/c the cBS execs have failed to strike the sets and have stopped returning the rented props for the show. Thanks to slashdot for helping us get the word out.
If you are interested in seeing what the show is about go to cbs.com\jericho and watch the episodes. If you lost interest in the middle of the season, go watch the second helf...it was really good. The love triangle is just a natural part of humantiy in a situation like that and was a part of the show...like it or not. It is resolved, and they move on in the second part of the season.
Save Jericho
NUTS to cBS
Thanks to nutsonline.com
jerichorallypoint.com
Shaun O'Mac and his radio show
and countless others who are working tirelessly to coordinate our campaign.
Joint the fight...it's not too late.
Re:Hyperbole Ho! (Score:4, Insightful)
Let it go.
Re:Witness the fall of the Republic (Score:3, Insightful)
And that's why it's the end of the Republic -- because the citizenry accepts that. Despite overheated claims on both sides, most elections in America are in fact legal and fair. It isn't Soviet Russia where there are insurmountable legal barriers to running. But Americans don't care enough (or don't have enough faith or whatever) to demand real choices and real candidates -- or, for that matter, even to run for office on any level. Most people just want to feel their opinion is heard somewhere. Democracy is hard work and touch-tone dialing the latest American Idol null poll is easy.
People say they don't vote because the system is unresponsive. But in fact, the system is unresponsive because they don't vote.
There's also a horizon problem, in that most Americans want a payoff within a short time period -- an hour, tops, but preferably before the end of the next commercial break. Real change takes time, as real systems have social inertia. So we can't be bothered to focus on any process long enough to achieve real success.
But in the end, the hell of it is, this truly is a representative democracy. We get exactly whom we deserve, and they're Just Like Us. More's the pity.
Re:It's a TV Show (Score:4, Insightful)
No - I think vetinarians should do it so it would be less cruel - although some skilled farm workers with those special pliers or rubber rings would be just as good.
Re:It's a TV Show (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:It's a TV Show (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:It's a TV Show (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are you wasting your time posting on here instead of doing any of the things you have listed, hypocrite?
Re:Jericho *was* Nuts (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Jericho *was* Nuts (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm guessing you didn't notice the show was canceled. And the number one breakout hit of the season is Heroes, which was written exactly the way Jericho SHOULD have been written -- taking an exciting premise and actually exploring it. Putting normal people we can recognize and identify with and throwing intensely crazy situations at them to see how they handle it. Characters developed over time, reacted to the amazing situation they were in, adapted, acted to try and change things (both for good and ill) and became drivers of the story at some times wile being pulled along by events larger than themselves at others. That's how you write compelling fiction.
I can't think of any character in Jericho that actually had a decent character arc of any kind, that changed in any significant way. It's a town full of stoic men and women who rise to the situation and have lots of mysterious military training that allows them to solve any problem without having to do any particularly hard work or make any tough choices. We're told through flashbacks that many of them were different people BEFORE the story we're seeing now, but that isn't the same thing as getting to know a character as one thing (and liking or hating them for it) and then watching them grow into something else due to the circumstances and their own choices.
And yes, I have written fiction professionally before (and will again). I went to school for, among other things, writing. I love purely character-based stories. But you can't spend so much time navel-gazing that you lose track of the actual plot for huge portions of the screen time. You can't sell a story as "The world is going to end in nuclear war! How will America survive?" and then deliver Green Acres crossed with 90210.