2 March, 2004-- Late Monday, the Save ANGEL Web site almost became a victim of its own success. The campaign sent out a last minute notice calling for fans to "Get Out The View" and promote viewership of the next episode of The WB series ANGEL. The recipients were some 5000 people world-wide who had signed up to be contacted by the group. The single message soon cascaded into a torrent of angry emails spanning the globe.
A misconfiguration on the mailing list program allowed the receivers to respond back, and have their messages forwarded to the other thousands of ANGEL fans. For half an hour, all was quiet, until a woman named Jane asked innocently, "Got any help?" Soon people were sending "Hello" messages to each other and questions about why they were getting so much mail.
The responses were innocuous at first, but quickly became irate as people kept replying to the messages they were receiving. "I tried to stop it as soon as it started, but I was on the receiving end, too." said campaign coordinator Simon Fleischmann.
Fortunately, for SaveANGEL.org the highly responsive staff at hosting provider LunarPages jumped on the problem almost immediately. But by the time the hole was closed, 20 messages had slipped out, nearly 100,000 emails in all.
According to LunarPages technical support, the explosion of responses choked one of their main servers, requiring they shut down all email to SaveANGEL.org for much of the day.
"We're extremely grateful that LunarPages didn't just shut the whole site down. They've been very gracious in the aftermath of a fan mailing gone horribly wrong," said Fleischmann.
Throughout most of Tuesday, the site's managers were dealing with the fallout, as supporters wrote in wanting to know why they were being "spammed." Personal apologies were the order of the day. "I've never said I'm sorry to so many people on one day," said a humbled Fleischmann. Nearly all the fans were sympathetic and understanding.
In New Jersey, Christine, a mother of a 14 year old, responded that even after the flood of messages she appreciated all that the campaign was doing."My daughter and I have been watching Angel since the beginning. It is a ritual with us. No matter how busy our lives are, we always sit down and watch it together."
Said Christine, "I dread to think what we will watch together now... I guess there is always the DVDs."
Tara Urquhart, a mother of three in Louisiana, wrote that she did want to keep getting updates about the Angel campaign, so long as they didn't accompany "stupid one word emails or questions about banners." In a posting, Tara said that Angel was one of "only 3 TV shows" she watched regularly. "If Angel is cancelled the WB will not be a network I support any longer."
Similar feelings from over 8500 fans were made available on the site yesterday. The outcome of an online petition, the complete comments along with names, ages and locations, will be printed, bound and delivered to The WB offices by mid-March. A number of petition efforts in support of ANGEL have been running simultaneously, but none include the demographic data that the SaveANGEL.org campaign has gathered to provide a fuller picture of ANGEL viewers.
According to Fleischmann, "No one has every measured the actual ANGEL audience before in this way. The Nielsen company can, at best, extrapolate based on a limited number of viewers who makes up the show's demographics."
Already some surprising findings have been made: a preponderance of the viewership is young females-- the exact audience The WB is trying to target.
The Nielsen ratings for Wednesday's episode of ANGEL is considered critical, as it falls on the closing day of "February Sweeps" and the last time for the next five weeks the series will be broadcast on The WB.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, CONTACT:
Simon Fleischmann
Coordinator,
SaveANGEL.org
coordinator@saveangel.org |
