The Uprising

The fans of Jericho have succeeded. The NUTS campaign (which reportedly sent 20 TONS of nuts to CBS) convinced the network to give Jericho a second season order for seven episodes (expect some characters to disappear or die suddenly when it returns -- they had to cut budget in order to do this).

Now, watching the success of this campaign, some Veronica Mars fans are emboldened. Introducing the Mars for Mars campaign! $1.79 will get you a Mars bar sent to the CW (and right now it's free shipping).

This news comes from Aint It Cool News. The poster of this story muses that if each fan gave $2 upfront to pay for an episode, (with supposedly at least 1 million viewers) they could have $2 million per episode budget. I talked about this kind of subscription model during the Geekerati show on Monday night. I don't think the timing is right for this yet, but I wouldn't be surprised to see some lower budget indie-type show financed in this way.

There is one big difference between Jericho and Veronica Mars -- Jericho had at least 7 million viewers when it pulled the plug. The first six or seven episodes had at least 10 million. Veronica Mars season high of viewers: 3 million. It's a steeper hill to climb to convince CW to renew Mars. The only promising news I can give you is that Rob Thomas had a concept for a 'reboot' of the show for another season, and the CW is pretty hard up for content right now.

This is all very interesting. Some shows have been saved before through the sheer devotion of fans, but this strikes me as a potential paradigm shift. The fans are going to need to do more than send nuts or candy bars to support their show, however. A show needs viewers. These fans are going to need to find a way to recruit new viewers (or reenlist old ones) to keep the show's ratings from sinking again. That requires a lot more commitment than clicking a 'buy' button at an internet store.

Will a viral campaign from fans work? Time will tell.

And now, the news many of you have waited for...

UPDATE:

Veronica Mars is Cancelled...Maybe.

5/16: Futon Critic reports this morning that The CW may not make a final decision on this until June 15. So I guess I *will* shut my big fat mouth and see what happens...

Other CW news: Series orders confirmed for half hour "Aliens in America" and hourlongs "Gossip Girl", "Reaper" and the untitled South Africa project.

"One Tree Hill", "Supernatural", and "Smallville" are all renewed for next year. Sitcom "All of Us" has been cancelled, but "Girlfriends" and "The Game" have been renewed.

CBS has renwed "How I Met Your Mother" and "The New Adventures of Old Christine" and dramas "The Unit", "Shark", "Criminal Minds" and "The Ghost Whisperer." "Rules of Engagement" is also renewed for next year.

"Close to Home", "Jericho", and "The Class" are cancelled.

Veronica Mars lives!

...and it looks like 'Gossip Girl', from Josh Schwartz (he who hath created 'The O.C.') is gonna get a pickup from CW also -- they were given the go ahead to start staffing.

Yes, the news is trickling in. I've also heard 'Action News', the comedy pilot with Kelsey Grammer and Patricia Heaton is a lock at Fox and 'Dirty Sexy Money' is gonna get a pimp spot, just like the new Grey's spinoff 'Private Practice' will...my bet is one of them goes to Monday and Brian hits the trash heap. But more about my predictions later...

UPDATE (10:49 AM WED): Or maybe it won't live. Ratings last night were beyond dismal into non-existant. Even with fire coverage pre-empting the show in L.A. there was an approximate loss of 500,000 viewers. The show has been pulling in less than 3 million viewers all season. Last night it was probably less than 2 million. Sadly, I'm not sure even a retooled VM could take off next season, certainly not if there are less than 3 million viewers for it...