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LOOKING AT THE CANCELLATION OF CBS' JERICHO AND FANS' INCREDIBLE FIGHT TO SAVE THE SERIES

Note from Mike: This article has absolutely nothing to do with professional wrestling, but if you are a professional wrestling fan who loves great television or someone who has that one favorite entertainment outlet that was taken away from you too soon, this will be of interest to you. Read on!

A funny thing happened on the way to the graveyard for CBS' drama Jericho, it's audience refused to let it die. While the final fate of the series remains up in the air, the entire scenario is playing out like a storyline that could have been booked by the likes of Bill Watts or Paul Heyman during their greatest heyday.

For those of you who are not familiar with the series, Jericho is a drama about a town in Kansas following a series of nuclear bombs going off in the United States. While the initial storyline revolves around the who did, where, why, and how of the attacks from the point of view of a town that is now closed off from all outside communication and power, the series grew into much, much more. It became a show about the importance and power of your loved ones and family standing together, one about the defense of your home, and one about the paranoia that lurks right outside in the dark, past the unknown.

Despite the premise of the show, this was hardly a rehashing of "Mad Max" or "The Day After." This was a series that focused on themes much more personal at heart. It was a show that dealt with the changing of one's life forever with one singular moment and finding yourself in a different place. Some characters rose up to become heroes and do the best that they could while others found themselves beginning to be corrupted by the new sense of power they now held in their hands due to circumstances beyond their control. Some episodes dealt with the mysteries of the attacks while others dealt with the family issues going on within the families that resided within the fictional Jericho, Kansas. Still others dealt with the tragedies that rocked these families to their core, with some coming with no warning despite everyone's best efforts to change the course of fate.

As the series ended it's first season, it became about war, and what does one do when their homes are threatened. Do they stand down or do they fight against odds that are stacked against them. When Jericho left the air, it was that theme that left viewers waiting to find out the conclusion to a series of cliffhangers that were expertly built throughout the season - but whether they ever do, it remains to be seen.

Jericho ran the gambit during it's 22 episode run. While it was a drama, there were elements of action-adventure, suspense, and sci-fi, but most of all, it felt legitimate and real. In a world of television production, where CGI is the norm for everything, Jericho felt like you were watching a world that you had just stepped into and were immediately familiar with, although it was nothing like your own. For many fans, that was and is a world worth fighting for.

When CBS announced the cancellation of the series last week, it sparked an online outrage the likes of which I cannot remember in recent memory. The closest I can even equate it with was the 1997 Strictly ECW movement to reverse the cancellation of the original ECW PPV (which worked). The CBS Jericho message board (which to the network's credit, has not been deleted) and a series of fan-created "Save Jericho" websites have risen from the trenches, directing traffic of fans to call, write, fax, and....send nuts.

Nuts? We'll get to that in a moment.

In the beginning of the movement last week, CBS stood to their cancellation, noting that the series' engine "wasn't working." Well, as any Jericho fan would point out, the series lost a chunk of its audience during a break over two months, which hurt the audiences on nearly every show on every network that followed a similar path. During its hiatus, Jericho was replaced by "Armed & Famous" the celebrity turned cop reality show that couldn't even survive its own planned six episodes. Jericho was never promoted by the network (sounds familiar to ECW fans from the TNN era, eh?) and when it returned it was up against some little known series known as...American Idol.

Despite the fact that after the hiatus, the series really, truly found its voice, some of the viewers moved on. Or did they? CBS pioneered the idea of streaming every episode on the CBS website (and if you are interested in sampling the show, they still are) while DVR technology makes the Nielsen ratings even more antiquated in 2007. While Jericho was fighting for it's life onscreen, the Network was ready to throw in the towel, silently, expecting the series would quietly sink into the depths, remembered by the most diehard fans with a DVD purchase for the complete series.

There was no push to market Jericho, the same series that they heavily pushed early in the season. In comparison to NBC's Heroes, CBS did nothing to get actors out on the talk show market, much less market T-shirts or other merchandise. Much like the fictional town in which the series was based, Jericho the series was tossed out into the void, a tremendous underdog fighting for its own survival against a network that did little to nurture it.

In the day of networks run by bean counters and executives focused on the bottom line financially, as opposed to creative artists trying to create quality TV, CBS' easy answer was to yank the series, ignoring the eight million viewers that tuned in weekly to see the show continue to evolve and improve. There was only one problem. The Jericho fan base refused to stand down.

CBS was besieged by faxes, letters, and emails, to the point that they set up separate voicemail lines for Jericho fans and changed the email addresses for the Senior Vice President of Programming, Kelly Kahl and Nina Tassler, the network's Entertainment President to stop Jericho fans from stuffing their email servers. While the network originally acted as if they were sorry that the series had to go (dismissing the fact that they themselves killed it), it was a done deal. Jericho fans, however, said, "Nuts to CBS."

Without giving too much spoiler information away, in the final episode, an invasion of the town is underway and when they are asked to surrender, Skeet Ulrich's character Jake responds, "Nuts", the World War II term for "Not Understand Term Surrender", which is based on a true story of Americans refusing to stand down to German forces and becomes something of personal meaning to Jake during a flashback sequence. Jericho fans began mailing nuts to CBS, but it may as well have been a snowball they were sending, because the nuts snowball has continued to grow with momentum, turning into an avalanche in the process.

New Jersey's Jeffrey Braverman, who owns NutsOnline.com began realizing they were receiving a number of orders from Jericho fans to ship to CBS. Initially dismissing it as silliness, Braverman began changing his tune while talking to some of the fans who were placing phone orders. Braverman soon realized that these were fans who were not loony or completely nuts over a failed sci-fi series but instead crossed all walks of life and background. Braverman, who has never seen the series but became interested after learning about it from customers, set up a designated page for fans to not only support the series with orders but to donate any amount of money with the idea of sending the nuts wholesale to CBS.

While Braverman is a smart businessman, he's also provided an outlet for fans to let their money do their talking in dramatic fashion to CBS. As of this writing, $5,253 worth of nuts (racking up to an insane 3,758 pounds) have been ordered, with the first delivery set to descend upon CBS' headquarters on West 52nd Street in New York City this afternoon.

As far as CBS, they are already taking notice of the movement to save the series, going as far as to have Nina Tassler post a note on the same message board that fans are using to voice their outtrage:

A Statement From CBS Entertainment
To the fans of Jericho:


We have read your emails over the past few days and have been touched by the depth and passion with which you have expressed your disappointment. Please know that canceling a television series is a very difficult decision. Hundreds of people at the Network, the production company and the incredibly-talented creative team worked very hard to build and serve the community for this show -- both on-air and online. It is a show we loved too.

Thank you for supporting Jericho with such passion. We truly appreciate the commitment you made to the series and we are humbled by your disappointment. In the coming weeks, we hope to develop a way to provide closure to the compelling drama that was the Jericho story.

Sincerely,

Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment”

While some may see Tassler as spinning the positive while trying to dissipate the fans' movement, the last paragraph shows some signs of a change of heart in CBS. When originally asked about the cliffhangers that the series' characters found themselves in, CBS dismissed the idea of closing the series, noting that things like that happen in television all the time. Now, they looking into ways to close the series.

In typical Jericho fashion, the same fans that decried the end of the series looked CBS in the face and said, "Nuts" again, noting that another episode or two hour finale wouldn't do justice to the 22 hours that the network had produced already and are standing fast with their hopes that CBS will change their mind and bring the series back, release the series to another network (the fans are already petitioning TNT among others) or do something else that will keep the series from being just another victim of poor programming decision fallout.

It's been an interesting story to follow and as a Jericho fan, I cannot even begin to say how happy it makes me to see so many people inspired by a wonderfully written and performed 22 hours of television fighting to keep the series alive. With actors and producers' contracts expiring in just a few weeks, the countdown is on...and this is one cliffhanger that we're guaranteed to see a resolution to.

Until then, Nuts to you, CBS!

For more information on the campaigns to reverse Jericho's cancellation, visit www.Jerichorallypoint.com and http://www.jericholives.com/.

To track the amount of nuts being shipped to CBS, visit http://www.nutsonline.com/gifts/jericho.html. As of this writing, there are close to 4,000 lbs. being sent to CBS headquarters in New York City. You can donate or just follow this incredible series of events, right down to the UPS tracking numbers for the shipments.

To watch a few episodes of Jericho for yourself or to check out the official Jericho message board on CBS, which has seen many of the show's cast and creators post in thanks to the insane support, visit http://www.cbs.com/primetime/jericho/.

Mike Johnson is a diehard Jericho fan and watched every episode religiously via his DVR, so count him as a fan that wouldn't exist under the current Nielsen ratings system. As a fan of "V" still waiting for his own heroes' cliffhangers to be resolved over 20 years later, he sincerely hopes to see a fresh season of Jericho on his TV screen sooner than later. He can be reached at Mike@PWInsider.com.

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