Online Communities Prepare for the Return of Jericho
The
Jericho online community is the stuff of legends. When the
CBS drama was cancelled last May after one ratings-deprived season,
fans of the series immediately mobilized in protest. But while fans
have united to “save” cancelled television shows in the
past, ultimately to no avail, the fans of Jericho succeeded
by bombarding CBS with forty-thousand pounds of peanuts in homage to
the one-word response U.S. Army General Anthony McAuliffe issued to
a German surrender ultimatum during World War II, and that actor Skeet
Ulrich likewise uttered in Jericho’s season finale: “Nuts!”
CBS Entertainment
president Nina Tasser released a statement at the time acknowledging
the campaign’s success in swaying the network to bring Jericho
back for an abbreviated seven-episode season that begins Tuesday, February
12, 2008. “Over the past few weeks you have put forth an impressive
and probably unprecedented display of passion in support of a prime
time television series. You got our attention; your emails and collective
voice have been heard,” the statement read. “On behalf of
everyone at CBS, thank you for expressing your support of Jericho
in such an extraordinary manner. Your protest was creative, sustained
and very thoughtful and respectful in tone. You made a difference.”
CBS, despite
being “America’s Most Watched Network” the last few
years, is often considered to be comprised of older viewers and an overabundance
of forensic dramas like CSI, which makes a character-driven
show with such a rabid online fanbase seem a little out of place. But
just as the fans have embraced Jericho, CBS appears to have
embraced the Jericho fans by offering online content different
and unique than their website usually serves up for other shows. While
the traditional forums where fans can gather and discuss elements of
a respective series are present, CBS.com
goes further with their Jericho pages by adding two blog communities,
one for the Jericho creative team called The
Salty Scoop: The Official Jericho Production Blog,
and one for fans of the series, appropriately named Jericho
Fan Central: A Blog by Fans for Fans.
“There is no discounting the passion and commitment of Jericho
fans to their show,” CBS.com states. “So what better way
to celebrate that passion and commitment than giving YOU the FANS a
voice on our site.” The website also gears itself to the online
community by providing links to the many Jericho fansites,
MySpace pages and Facebook groups available on the Internet.
There are
numerous video shorts on CBS.com as well, and they are likewise not
simply relegated to typical “preview” clips. There are two
“making of” sequences, for instance, where viewers are taken
behind the scenes of special effect footages—the crashing of a
train and the use of napalm—but the most riveting video is also
the most simplistic: the initial table read for the first episode of
Jericho’s second season. Although the writers had been
back to work for a few weeks, this was the first time the full cast
and crew had assembled since the end of season one. “We are part
of television history,” executive producer Carol Barbee tells
them, “and part of that is because of the stories we told and
part of that is because the actors are awesome and you’re awesome
because you went on the Internet and you helped lead these people and
you made them feel like they’re part of our family and they just
fought and fought and fought and that is just the coolest, coolest thing.”
CBS has
also ventured into territory that NBC (Heroes) and ABC (Lost)
have recently experimented with—the alternative reality game (ARG),
an interactive story broken into fragments that players reassemble by
finding clues, solving puzzles and connecting dots. Fans of Jericho
are thus able to follow the adventures of Tom Tooman, a Native American
who finds himself in the same changed and different United States as
the characters from the show. Players are encouraged to piece together
the unfolding story through fictitious websites like the ones for the
Sakanas
Herald newspaper and Black
Hills Radio Control, where visitors
can scan for communications from other survivors of the recent nuclear
attack. The Tooman story even dovetails into the main Jericho
storyline with the recently discovered Jennings
& Rall website, the company that
will assist in rebuilding the Kansas community during season two.
The Jericho
online community obviously extends further than the official CBS website,
however, and the scattered sites that organized the “Save Jericho”
movement last year are likewise preparing fans for the show’s
return. Jeritopia,
for instance, held a seven-day Jericho “Pep Rally”
the week before the premier with a series of online chats that included
actress Jennie Sword (an extra on the show known by fans as “A
Humble Townperson”), co-executive producer Karim Zreik, Carol
Barbee, and Jericho writer Jon Steinberg. There was even “Saturday
Jericho Game Night,” as well as a “Two Old Ladies
of Jericho” chat. Back in August, Remote
Access asked two Jericho
fans to guest-blog on their website; they accepted but approached the
task from the fictitious eyes of “Edna and Margie,” portrayed
as two of Jericho’s oldest residents. The humorous, gossip-filled
blog became both a must-read for Jericho fans and made “Edna
and Margie” instant Jericho celebrities.
Jericho
Rally Point is another popular gathering
place for fans, and the website’s creator, who goes by the online
moniker “point4zero,” recently shared their feelings about
the Jericho online community: “I realize that every community
is going to think that theirs is the best, but I especially think the
online Jericho community is truly one of the greatest. Jericho
is a show about the human spirit in the face of disaster. It shows me
that every member, whether on JRP or any other Jericho
message board, share the same feelings about life, love, and everything
we value as human beings. Even though most of us have never met and
probably never will, it shows me that we’re all humans with real
feelings. We all love the show for the same reasons, and we all rallied
together to save it.”
In order
to rally fans for the season four premier of Lost, ABC.com
released “Everything You Need To Know About Lost In Eight
Minutes and Fifteen Seconds,” a concise and often humorous video
short. Not to be outdone, CBS.com came up with “100 Reasons to
Watch Jericho,” an equally concise and humorous companion
piece. From “tank explosions” to “mine shaft explosions,”
“Ashley Scott wearing nothing but a towel” to “Skeet,
Skeet, Skeet, Skeet, Skeet,” the video rapidly lists reason after
reason and no doubt ramps up the anticipation level for fans of Jericho.
It is the ending, however—reason number one, if you will—that
most connects, and is also a fitting testament to CBS and their willingness
to both stand by and support the online fans of Jericho.
“And
the best reason to watch Jericho?” the narrator asks
before the clip shifts to Skeet Ulrich, on his walkie-talkie, uttering
that one word that will no doubt go down in both television and Internet
history: “Nuts!”
February
11, 2008
