Jumping on the Bandwagon… to Save Journeyman!

Originally Published on January 27, 2008 at TV.com:

This is a first for me.I have never, ever, gotten caught up into the world of trying to save a good show.Until now.  Journeyman is under threat of being canceled by NBC.What is Journeyman? Probably one of the most intelligent shows to grace the 2007/2008 season.

Why haven’t you heard of it?  Because NBC decided to mass promote their other shoes like the returning Heroes, the new Bionic Woman and the new Chuck.  Personally, I was a Heroes fan last year – but this year, not so much.  I think for me, the excessive promotions for Heroes turned me off for this new season, and I didn’t even bother to tune in. 

I was mildly interested in Bionic Woman, though the buzz wasn’t positive because of it being yet another ‘remake’ of an old series.  I was a huge fan of Lindsay Wagner in the role of the original Bionic Woman when I was growing up, so I wasn’t too keen on Lindsay being replaced in this ‘modernized’ version.  I did, though, watch the first episode, but it didn’t hook me and I never watched the subsequent episodes.  Chalk it up to annoying over-promotion by NBC. 

What about Chuck?  Well, life was too busy to check out Chuck, so I didn’t watch when it first aired.  But many friends recommended I take a look at it because it was entertaining, so I finally checked it out online and was pleasantly surprised.  Since there was a vast wasteland of television shows flooding the networks due to the writer’s strike, Chuck was a nice change of pace.

Journeyman, however, had me hooked from the beginning.  In spite of the lack of promotions, I was able to check it out from the start – one of the very few shows that I actually made time to sit and watch ‘live’. Journeyman is not your typical ‘Time Travel’ series…it cannot be compared to Quantum Leap, because it is nothing like Quantum Leap – unless you compare the basic ‘time travel’ aspect of it.

But Sam Beckett always traveled into another persons physical body to ‘fix’ what needed to be fixed – Dan travels within his own time to help people, and we get to see the impact those ‘changes’ have in the future.We also get to see Dan’s family life, and see how his traveling affects his wife, son, brother, friends, etc.  With Sam, you never got to see his actual life, and his travel was his own experiment, not an involuntary thing like it is with Dan.  Sam was always trying to get back to his ‘real’ life; we got to see Dan live his. 

While they’re both a ‘Time Travel’ series, they are so different in their whole outlook on that subject.  And if we were so narrow minded to think there can’t be more than one ‘type’, then there wouldn’t be two vampire shows running during the same season – both extremely popular, and we wouldn’t have the number of ‘similar’ books published simultaneously for the same reason.

Journeyman brings a modern-day ‘twist’ to the time travel theme and Kevin McKidd as the lead has won the hearts of many with his stellar performance.  This show was not made for those that look for mindless entertainment, it really makes you think as the story unfolds, which is a refreshing change.

The fan base for Journeyman has grown by leaps and bounds in a very short amount of time, in spite of the threat of it being canceled – NBC did not promote this show before its season premiere, and a lot of people had no idea what it was, when it was on, or what it really was about. 

A lot of Quantum Leap fans chose not to watch it based on the minimal promotions, because they made the assumption that it would be a remake of a show they loved – and generally remakes just don’t cut it anymore.  They were pleasantly surprised when they did watch Journeyman at how different it really was from their old favorite, and quickly became full-fledged Journeyman Fans. 

By the same token, those that didn’t like Quantum Leap also didn’t watch for the same reason – the promotions were minimal and didn’t give you a true vision of the series, and since they didn’t like Quantum Leap, they were certainly not going to watch a remake of it.  They, too, have been pleasantly surprised and are now solid Journeyman Fans.

As more people download episodes of Journeyman to see what all the buzz is about, the number of enthusiastic fans has been growing rapidly – but we are all concerned by NBC’s lack of faith in this series, as well as not taking advantage of this time to re-air the previous episodes to see how drastically the ratings numbers will be compared to when the episodes first aired.  I think they would be pleasantly surprised.

February and May Sweeps are coming up – what better way for NBC to have their numbers soar by airing the episodes again during that time.  That would be the intelligent thing to do with such an intelligent series.

The Journeyman fans are rallying together, fighting the good fight to Save Journeyman.  There are some really good websites set up just for that, check them out.  The rapid increase in the ratings via Hey! Nielsen has been phenomenal to watch, if you’re a Journeyman Fan, too, you should join the Hey! Nielsen group and add your opinions and comments, too.  Every comment, every opinion counts. 

We are also doing a Rice-A-Roni Campaign, in the same spirit the Jericho fans did with their campaign to send peanuts to the network – CBS listened to the Jericho fans and it’s coming back, we’re hoping that the Rice-A-Roni Campaign Journeyman will have the same effect as the peanut campaign for Jericho.

Here are some helpful links to Save Journeyman:

http://savejourneyman.net/

http://heynielsen.com

The first one is an excellent resource to find out more about the Save Journeyman Campaign and has links to find out about what you can do.  Hey! Nielsen is connected to the Nielsen Ratings, so it’s an excellent place to go voice your opinion on Journeyman and maybe, just maybe, we’ll be able to bring Journeyman back.  Dan, we’re leaving the light on for you!