TVSquad

I have to admit, this made me chuckle.

You know how you latch on to a show that gets so-so ratings (Arrested Development, Jericho, Moonlight, etc.) and then the show is canceled and you're forced to scramble fans together to send nuts or whatever to the network to demonstrate how much you want the show to stick around? Well, why wait until the show is canceled to do that? In fact, why wait until the show even premieres?

Fans of the new FOX/Joss Whedon show Dollhouse (can you be a "fan" if the show hasn't debuted yet?) have already started a "Save Our Show" campaign, because they fear that FOX will cancel the show quickly, like they did another Whedon show, Firefly.

OK, now this might be the grossest "save our show" mail campaign yet.

The folks over at New York mag's Vulture Culture are urging readers to send hair to ABC to save the in-trouble sitcom Cavemen. They're upset that the show wasn't on ABC's list of shows renewed for the 2008-09 season, and they want people to start mailing envelopes filled with their hair to ABC Entertainment President Stephen McPherson. And they're suggesting you even shave your head completely. They want you to include the note "Hair Today, Hair Tomorrow." No word yet on whether or not the stuff will be sent Hair-Mail (ha!).

With so many different campaigns going to save shows recently it could almost be a weekly feature here, and here is yet another for you to consider. I bring this one up partly out of a selfish desire to see it succeed, because The Dresden Files has become my second favorite Sci Fi Original, but also because I think it actually has a shot at working.

There is a bunch of helpful info over at the group's main site. They have a letter writing campaign where if you email your letter to Dresden fan Belynda she will print it out and mail it for you, email and phone contact info for Sci Fi, links to a petition, and a host of other options for you to help out.

Every time a television show with even a moderate fan base gets cancelled, a petition soon follows. Usually fans opt to use petitiononline.com. Other times they may just solicit "signatures" via their own blog's comments, or perhaps ask other fans to snail-mail the studios with postcards.

Do these online petitions work? Do the studios see these petitions, some with tens of thousands of signatures, and think, "wow, you know what? Forget what we said about this show being cancelled -- there's a whole 25,000 people out there we'll disappoint real bad if we cancel now!"

Does anyone have a success story to tell us, one that might give hope to these petition organizers? And how about you studio folks out there -- do these petitions make you think twice about cancelling a show, or are they a sad waste of time?