'Jericho' Fan Campaigners Remain Optimistic

"We feel 'Jericho' was not given a real chance," Tricia Kate, a fan from Michigan who operates the Save Jericho Now MySpace page, told SyFy Portal's Michael Hinman. "Brought on as a new show, it was abruptly put on a three-month hiatus back in November. Any show is going to suffer from a break that long. In addition, when it reappeared in late February, promos in previous weeks were scarce. Not only that, 'Jericho' was brought back in the same time slot as a ratings monster, 'American Idol,' which was already in full swing."

Fans of the show and leaders of these various campaigns have a single goal in common: Don't just provide closure for the one-season series. Give it a renewal, and if fans don't show up this time around, then do what you want. That is if you ask one very passionate fan, Pittsburgh radio station operator Clarke Ingram.

"Most of the fans out there don't want a two-hour movie," Ingram said. "They want the show to come back. If we get a 13-episode order, and it comes back in January, that's great. If they put it on in January and promote it, and it doesn't do well, then we had our chance and it didn't happen. But we at least want the chance to prove the show can be a success."

Of all the shows that were cut by the networks last week during television fall season upfronts, it seems that no show -- not even "Veronica Mars" or "Gilmore Girls" -- is getting the public outcry that "Jericho" has. The show, according to Zap2it, dropped from nearly 11 million viewers in the first half of the season to just over 8 million in the second half. Some fans, many of them quite serious, point to how those numbers were better than Katie Couric's stint on the "CBS Nightly News," yet the network is continuing their investment there. Even the dark themes of life after multiple nuclear bombs destroying major American cities wasn't harsh enough to keep families away from the show, said Dallas resident David Haynes, who runs both SaveJericho.info and a Save Jericho MySpace page.

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