Article 1 - "HOW THE INTERNET SAVED JERICHO" July 2007 edition of First Church of The Streets

    It's not often that I get really into a TV show. I mean, it's only TV, right? It's not like saving refugees from Darfur or halting global warming or any other really focal and hip issue of the day. But saving Jericho from the cutting table became something that took up my time and energy. It's funny what a human being can become attached to.

    The fact that I got involved in saving a TV show seemed to be a joke in itself. You see, I am not an extreme primetime television viewer, blogging on every site to express my opinion of what the producers should have only done if they had me running the place. Not only do I not blog about TV, I only watch three primetime shows on to begin with. I don't watch CSI Miami or CSI New York or CSI meets ER. I don't watch Survivor Tahiti or Survivor CSI. I don't watch Ugly Christine or the New Adventures of Old Two and a Half Men or Lost Scrubs. As for the plethora of reality shows post-Survivor, why bother? Isn't that what the weather channel and CNN for?

    No, the only three primetime shows I watch are 24, The Unit, and of course, Jericho. Otherwise, it's news, the Discovery Channel, or Star Trek series reruns. Or, more harrowing, following the New York Giants or the Mets during their usual tumultuous seasons. I usually watch serial dramas, but that can be a risky proposition as a viewer. Of note: Vanished vanished, Day Break broke, Invasion was taken over, Surface sunk, and Threshold never got to its namesake. The idea of Prison Break never appealed to me; it seemed like a show that should be a two hour movie and then be done with it. Lost didn't even make it on my radar, and no matter what anyone says, Heroes looks like something that should be on the Disney Channel. The other stuff reminded me of why hardline anti-TV people call the thing the "boob tube". And of the three I watch, The Unit really only hooked me because the sergeant played the President on 24. So really, it's 24 and Jericho for me.

    This limited selection from the junk food buffet of TV makes me pretty protective of my selections. It's like when you go to a Chinese buffet only to please your spouse and the only foods you can tolerate is moo shoo pork and stir fry vegetables. Then one day, you show up, only to find moo shoo pork replaced with New and Improved items like sushi. That sort of what was my reaction when I found out about Jericho, that not only it was being canned, but it was going to be replaced by a bunch of brats enacting the Lord of the Flies, sort of like Survivor for Juniors. Some joke of a show called Kid Nation. And I thought Heroes was bad?

    It really was kind of sheer luck that led me to the ridiculous information that Jericho had been nuked. Perusing the website of CNN.com during the time I was supposed to be writing, I noticed in their Entertainment section a story that told me that 24 had been renewed for another two years. Intrigued, I clicked on the story, which told me that Jack Bauer was going to save the world and be screwed by the government in the end for another two seasons. Pleased with that news, and in the spirit of continuing to write by surfing the net, I decided to look up CBS for the heck of it just to see the fall lineup, fully thinking that I would just be taking a quick glance, seeing Jericho scheduled for 8 o'clock on Wednesday and The Unit on 9pm Tuesday. Tuesday's lineup confirmed my dulled expectations, but I woke up to full alert to find that Jericho was not on Wednesday. It wasn't on Thursday or Saturday or two o'clock in the morning on Monday. It wasn't there at all.

    This random chance encounter led me to meet up with other people online who confirmed the dark realization I faced. Jericho, inexplicably to me, had been cancelled. I had been so enthralled in the show that I had missed several warning signs that the show was slowly deteriorating in the minds of CBS. Like Lost and Prison Break before it, CBS had experimented with the concept of splitting the season in two, having a three month hiatus in between the two halves. I had never thought that made much sense, preferring the straight through format of 24, but the format had worked for Prison Break and Lost so it never occurred to me that it would be a problem.

    And because I never watch it, I never considered the second factor that fired upon Jericho. When it came back in March on its regular Wednesday slot, it was in direct competition with American Idol. I personally wouldn't have switched loyalties from Jericho to the tedious carpings and neurotic angst of Simon and Paula, but a lot of other people apparently made that decision. Especially when they thought that the "season" of Jericho had been completed in November. So this didn't help either.

    Suffice it to say, despite my being caught off guard and no matter what I thought of the reason, Jericho was gone. It had been bombed. CBS had nuked the bomb on it, no matter what Hawkins the shadow figure had in mind for that erstwhile WMD. I was shocked. Talk about shock and awe. And from what I could tell on the Web, I wasn't the only one in mourning either.

    The thing with the web is that information can be conveyed really quickly. Once I saw that Jericho wasn't in the fall lineup, I went to the message boards on CBS, on TV.com, and anywhere else I could find information. The inflamed opinion of many announced with vehemence that yes, Jericho had been cancelled. Outrage was expressed by many people, a collaborative effort of incense that one of the best shows on television had been cancelled. To be replaced with a bunch of kids stuck on an island, no less. The general opinion; WHAT THE HELL WAS CBS THINKING?

    This is where things got interesting for me. I never really followed boards before when one of the shows I watched got cancelled. Passively, I would get annoyed that yet another one of my shows was gone, and then check the listings to see what else was being offered that was worthwhile. But this time, I was annoyed and angry. This was the third time this season I had been led to watch what seemed to be an interesting series, only to have the thing yanked from under me. And for what? Reality television that no one cared about? So I followed the boards, commiserating with my fellow Jericho fans. I read the entries, drinking up their anger like a salve. Of all things to cancel: Jericho?

    The more I read, the more I discovered that these were not some bunch of idlers, carping about another cancelled show until the next one came along. No, like me, these guys were really ticked off, and they were not going to let CBS off all that easily. Using the web as a tool, they were going to take action, create some noise and rise a protest. There was a link leading to a petition for the public to sign. So I did, becoming the 8200th or so to sign. Not only that, there were sites created especially for the campaign, too numerous for me to keep count of. But I followed many of them, sending e-mails to CBS and trailing along with Wikipedia to hear what the activists had in mind, from the e-mail campaign to the unique NUTS campaign, which could take a whole story in itself just to explain. Suffice it to say, several weeks later, Jericho was reinstated, all because of the campaign launched to save it, all because the Internet banded those together who wanted to save it, and the Internet provided the forum to campaign for its survival.

    Blogs, e-mail, and videos on You Tube: These are the new tools which empower those who in a previous time didn't know their voices would be heard any other way. Maybe they wouldn't even know how to make their voices heard, or what they had to make their voices heard over. If it hadn't been for that casual browsing on the Internet, I wouldn't have even known the show had been cancelled. If it hadn't been for the Internet, the campaigns would have been more marginal. An e-mail today can link you with people who previously would be impossible to reach by any other way. The secret computer dealings of Robert Hawkins in Jericho led him to keep ahead of things even after nuclear terrorism, and the computer is what linked me up to save Jericho. If Jericho can be saved by the net, and blogs can determine a presidential election, maybe there is a chance for issues like Darfur and global warming, if enough people get together.

    In the meantime, I am looking forward to watching the reprise of Jericho's first season, starting on Friday, July 6 at 9pm ET. Then the seven-week show afterwards to see what happens next. It isn't often that a show is this exciting, but it is for me. The Internet linked all the others devoted to the show, and created a network of strangers who would have never communicated otherwise to unite in a common interest. Surely, darker connections have been made and strengthened, but if something morally neutral can link to network and communications, so can networks for a higher and common good.