TVSquad

I want to talk to you about a grass roots campaign to save Eli Stone. You see, I had this idea where fans of the program would send George Michael paraphernalia - CDs, MP3s, T-Shirts, programs, videos - to the executive mugwumps over at ABC in order to express their frustration that they were not picking up the back nine episodes of the series. It would have been similar in scope to the Great Peanut Campaign of 2007 that ending up (temporarily) saving Jericho.

Then I got to thinking, which is always a bad sign. While a campaign such as this could result in programming executives opening their minds for just a minuscule amount of time to the possibilities of continuin the series, I'm not too sure it would be worth it. Not 'worth' in the terms that the campaign would fall on the deaf ears of the tailor-suited wonks. I'm talking about 'worth' in what it would cost the fans of the show to get the materials and ship them out to send a message. We are in a recession, after all.

Okay, enough already! Personally, I'm glad that the grass roots campaign to save Jericho turned out well, and I think that the Mars candy bar campaign to save Veronica Mars is cute, but a futile attempt (at least according to show creator Rob Thomas). But, when a television studio tells you to sign a petition to save a show that the network didn't seem to really want in the first place you're going a bit too far.

The studio I'm talking about is Warner Brothers Television, and the show I'm talking about is ABC's Traveler. We actually received an email from someone over at WBTV promoting an online petition asking for a second season of the show, which has done okay since its premiere. The petition says that 8 episodes of the show aren't enough and the network should consider bringing the show back for a new season. As I write this there are 513 signatures, which is probably not enough to send to the programming wonks over at the Alphabet Network.