Thanks to TropiLisa for this:<\/p>\n
I don’t know if anyone saw this already but I saw it and went nuts so here is
\nan article about getting sci fi shows renewed and roswell is in here<\/p>\nCINESCAPE
\nNovember\/December 2000
\n(It has Gillian Anderson and Robert Patrick from X-Files on the cover)
\npg 10
\nGOING POSTAL
\nIt’s a scenario with which genre TV viewers are all too familiar: Watch
\na show, grow to love it, see it snuffed out by ratings-obsessed network
\nexecutives, launch a massive letter-writing campaign to bring it back, see
\nsaid crusade fail as canceled series fades into obscurity.
\nNonetheless, such grassroots efforts are–thanks to the Internet–more
\ncommon than ever; in face, some actually have helped salvage a few shows from
\nobliteration. In 1998, eight new episodes of UPN’s The Sentinel were ordered
\nafter fans bombarded the network with letters and e-mails; similar pleas
\nhelped revive USA’s La Femme Nikita, The WB’s endangered Roswell and SCI FI’s
\nLexx.
\nWhy the changes in fan fortune? Well, it’s partly because the shows that
\nwere rescued aired on cable and netlets WB and UPN; modern letter writing
\nefforts by devotees of major network series normall go unheeded.
\n“Letter-writing campaigns do not work on the [broadcast network] level,”
\nsays Mark Dawidziak, TV critic for The Cleveland Plain Dealer. “There were
\nwrite-in campaigns to get [the 1986 NBC series] Starman back on the air and
\n[CBS’s] The Equalizer back on. These things were all unsuccessful, largely
\nbecause they occurred in a three-network universe. You couldn’t have saved
\nNow and Again if you wanted to; CBS wanted to get rid of it because it was
\ntoo expensive. [Bu] with cable shows, a write-in campaign can be very
\neffective. you’re not talking about that big of a universe compared to the
\nnetworks: You’re talking about a rather limited audience. And those kinds of
\nprogrammers can be swayed.”
\nOther less obvious factors also lie behind the success of renewals: The
\nSentinel was temporarily revived primarily because of corporate pressure
\nParamount (which produced the series) put on sister company UPN. La Femme
\nNikita’s reprieve came after USA lost its lucrative WWF contract. However,
\nNikita fans weren’t swayed by the skepticism: “It wasn’t an issue with us,”
\nsays Nicole Esposito, a webmaster of the SaveLa Femme Nikita site. “We know
\nhow much work went into this. Besides, without the fans campaigning to see
\nthe show, I don’t think it would have raised so much [media] coverage.”
\nAnd with the letter-writing campaigns growing more and more
\ncreative-Nikita fans sent network executives sunglasses and dollar bills,
\nRoswell supporters mailed tiny bottles of Tabasco sauce to critics and Now
\nand Again viewers inundated CBS with hard-boiled-egg-they are almost
\nguaranteed to garner publicity for shows. “I think the fans’ voices were
\ndefinitely heard,” says Roswell executive producer Jason Katims. “Every
\nlittle thing they did helped get us renewed at that point.” In fact, the
\norganized pleas might hlep prolong the life of a series even if the end
\nresult still is cancellation. “The letters were one of the reasons we got
\nkept alive for so long,” says Freaks and Geeks cocreator Paul Feig of the
\nmass of mailings sent in support of the critically acclaimed series.
\nAlthough that populist campaign failed to save the show, it contributed to
\nthe Fox Family Channel’s decision to broadcast previously unaired episodes on
\ncable.
\nAccording to TV critic Dawidziak, most successful write-in campaigns
\nshould begin before a series is canceled and its cast and crew have been
\nhired for other projects. Meanwhile, the fan of programs airing on the three
\ncampaign-immune major networks (CBS, ABC and NBC) might be best served going
\nto cable networks and asking them to pick up the show instead: “That’s what
\nthe campaigns of the future are going to be: Pick your network and start
\nlobbying someone to save your show in another realm.”
\nBut even though everyone agrees that write-in campaigns have the odds
\nstacked against them, fan effort won’t easily be detered. “When we started
\nwe were told by many people, ‘You don’t stand a chance, these are all about
\nmoney, they never work, why bother?” says Esposito, who adds that some of the
\ninitial naysayers were themselves Nikita fans. “So the idea of it not
\nworking was always a factor. But as people thought about it a little more,
\nit was worth it for them just to try. Whatever the outcome was, at last we
\nknow we attempted to bring it back.”<\/p>\n(On the right hand side then it has a picture of Roswell from when it was in
\nHollywood trade papers or whatever magazine it was in and it says: And if
\nyour efforts do pay off, you might want to follow the examples of Roswell and
\nLExx fans and buy ads in Hollywood trade papers thanking the powers-that-be
\nfor bringing your show back.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thanks to TropiLisa for this: I don’t know if anyone saw this already but I saw it and went nuts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"colormag_page_container_layout":"default_layout","colormag_page_sidebar_layout":"default_layout","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[44],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-roswell","tag-roswell-mentioning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1428"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1428\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1428"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1428"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/crashdown.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1428"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}