Legend of the Seeker Fans Struggle Mightily to save Their Show
What should you do if your favorite television show is cancelled? Find a new one? Not if you’re a science fiction fan. The SciFi community has a well-earned reputation for rising up with a vegeance when a beloved show suddenly loses its lustre and fails to make the numbers. The tradition goes all the way back to the 1960s when fans of Star Trek persuaded NBC to bring the show back for a (shortened) third season.
There have been other notable scifi fan campaigns to revive dead shows. Farscape fans got a mini-series. Jericho fans got a few more episodes. Stargate fans saw their show move to SciFi/Syfy. Firefly fans were given a movie. Anything is possible if enough people get together and take decisive action. So when EW announced earlier this week that Legend of the Seeker, which had been balancing precariously on the knife’s edge since March (when the bankrupt Tribune Company dropped its support for the show), Seeker fans around the world sprang into action.
The scifi fans had already tried to save the show once. Their online petition failed to collect 50,000 signatures and it seemed like everyone settled down to await the final call. But when the EW announcement of impending cancellation came a small media company called Slam Internet, Inc. rolled out a counter strategy: they asked a science fiction Website to carry the Seeker widget. The widget plays videos and includes cast information and news. Once Xenite.Org’s Seeker fan site was updated with the widget, Seeker fans around the world stopped crying and started demanding that the show be saved.
An impressive rally grew out of a solitary forum discussion called ‘The Renewal WarWagon’. Suddenly, everyone was ready to pitch in and help. Hundreds of fans took to Twitter within minutes, posting “save our seeker” messages, contacting writers, actors, network representatives, and anyone who would listen.
A new Save The Seeker blog followed quickly and it has been posting updates on every move the fan community makes. They have compiled lists of sponsors (some of whom have already endorsed the campaign), Disney and ABC executives (who must by now have changed their email addresses), representatives from SyFy (which had already passed on the show), and just about every celebrity who has ever said anything good about the show.
Awestruck by the powerful reaction to their article, EW seems to have fallen into a petulant funk, taunting and insulting the fans. Virtually every media site that has expressed any support for the show has received links and thanks from dozens of fans. EW is now on the short list of bad guys — right alongside Tribune. There can be no doubt that the economy had a hand in this fiasco but it remains to be seen what the end is.
Maybe if fans buy enough DvDs they’ll see a movie in a year or two.
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