THE subject line read simply "Unleash the e-mail hounds!!"
And unleashed they certainly were.
"Wonderfalls" producers Todd Holland, Tim Minear and Bryan Fuller are taking matters into their own hands, reaching out to the Internet in search of support for their critically acclaimed show. "Wonderfalls" moves from Friday to Thursday beginning tonight, hopefully yoked with the more compatible "Tru Calling."
"This is the night that matters!"
"FOX must see us perform in the new time slot or they will not let us live there."
"E-mail this to everyone you know!
"Bribe a Nielsen family!"
While the catch-phrase for this show is "Surrender to Destiny," the producers are doing no such thing. They plan on fighting for their show down to the last Nielsen box.
The quirky midseason replacement about a cynical young underachiever who starts getting messages from inanimate objects quickly gained support from critics across the country. Few escaped the magic
of this deftly written and well-acted series about a reluctant heroine.
But as we've learned in the past, just because we critics try to lead you viewers to the water trough doesn't mean you start guzzling.
Despite those glowing reviews, viewers tuned out in droves.
Minear knows quite a lot about mustering the troops for low-rated shows. Starting with "The X-Files," Minear saw firsthand how a bunch of Internet fans could spur network interest in a series. He followed that gig with "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" and "Angel," two shows that had a powerful Internet fan base that helped keep them alive despite struggling ratings.
(His gig on Fox's "Firefly," however, showed how quickly a unique show can get the hook.)
"We all decided to start a grassroots campaign," says Fuller, who spend four years writing and producing "Star Trek: Voyager" before creating the Showtime series "Dead Like Me." "Tim wrote a lovely letter to his Internet fans pleading with them to check out the show. Friends of mine from 'Star Trek' sites have been promoting the show to that online fan base. Todd has been working very closely with our art department designing fetching Internet postcards that everyone who's worked on the show have been mass
e-mailing to all their friends.
"Everyone has been chipping in."
Internet buddy Sarah Kuhn forwarded one of the first producers' pleas to go out over the Internet to me.
"The problem," Kuhn wrote in an e-mail, "is that we've been through this before, finding a good show we really like -- 'Buffy,' 'Angel,' 'Firefly' -- and are loyal to and the networks just pull them off the air. It's hard to get attached to another show you know is probably going to fail."
Courtesy of timestar.com |
