Originally published on TV.com on March 01, 2008:
Here we are… it’s now March 1st and the fanatical JourneyFans are still going strong. We’ve hit a few bumps in the road, but we’re not going to let that stop us from pressing on towards our ultimate goal, getting Journeyman back on our airwaves.
Our huge Valentines Day Rice-A-Roni shipments weren’t especially ‘welcome’ by NBC – the shipping department ‘refused’ a lot of Rice-A-Roni, much to the disappointment of the fans. I mean really, REFUSED? And here I thought we were doing a good thing – fighting for our show and helping to feed the homeless.
That’s right – our campaign is doing something more than just annoying the NBC executives – NBC was donating all the Rice-A-Roni they receive to City Harvest, a wonderful organization in New York that helps feed the homeless. So why refuse shipments of something that will ultimately give NBC good PR? Who knows…
Unless they were trying to discourage us from doing it anymore, you know, maybe they don’t really like Rice-A-Roni? I’m sure the Rice-A-Roni Company wouldn’t be too happy to hear about that! Bet they’d be happy to be one of the intelligent sponsors to support an intelligent show like Journeyman. A great San Francisco Treat – a great show set in San Francisco…what a match!
I’ve mentioned it before, but it’s still worth revisiting… you’ve already heard (probably many times) that NBC has ‘announced’ they’re going to be doing some big dog-and-pony show in early April to win their advertisers over for they’re…brilliant…idea of having a 52 week ‘season’. OK, so Fox did that a few years back…and my only question is does that mean ‘NBC Reality TV’ 52 weeks a year? No thanks!
How about quality, thought-provoking television instead? Sure, with a 52 week ‘season’, they can have their precious reality TV shows, too, but give us more quality scripted programs and we’re all about having good TV for 52 weeks out of the year. Knock yourselves out! We’ll see how this ’52 week season’ plays out.
NBC has said a lot of things we’re waiting to see if they really are a network of reliability. They said they will be cutting costs by not buying ‘new’ future pilots, and that they plan to ‘nurture’ new shows to get a better return in the long run. So why not start with a quality show like Journeyman for that nurture process? This show hasn’t even gotten the same mistreatment of other shows by being shuffled around on the schedule to see if that would shake up the numbers a bit…why not?
I have said many times I firmly believe that NBC knew that Journeyman has the potential to be a huge hit, and rather than let another network take all the glory by buying this show and being successful with it, NBC snapped it up first. You know, to offset any possibility that any other network would bask in the glory of such great success, after all, NBC reduced themselves to the bottom of the pile from the 1 spot by their inconsistent decision making practices. They used to be the 1 network, but ran themselves down to the bottom of the barrel by pulling stunts like what they pulled with Journeyman.
They ran Journeyman into the ground by not promoting it, and not putting it in a better suited time slot for a ‘family friendly’ show. You read that right – ‘Family Friendly’. That’s what Journeyman is, you know. Oh, wait, you couldn’t know that because NBC didn’t promote Journeyman very much, and what little they did certainly didn’t do the show justice!
In spite of the fact that NBC didn’t promote Journeyman, in spite of the fact they ‘gave up’ on it very early on, and in spite of the fact they never showed repeats like they’ve done with so many other ‘non-worthy’ shows, the fan base is continuing to grow. It never ceases to amaze me the sheer number of people who are genuine fans! Quite a number of people I’ve spoken with never heard of it – obviously (back to that ‘non-promoting’ point) – but of those people, 100% of them have become hooked on Journeyman after catching up with the rest of us online.
The number of fans for Journeyman is growing by leaps and bounds, in spite of the various news sources citing that it’s canceled. NBC still has yet to officially announce its cancellation, but they have been doing subtle things, like pulling Journeyman’s videos off their website…then removing the link to get to the Journeyman page from their main pull-down menu.
That’s not going to stop the fans from fighting for the return of our worthy show. That’s not going to stop the masses from still watching it online through Hulu and purchasing the episodes from iTunes to watch over and over – because this show is just as good a second and third time around, which is yet another rarity for pretty much any show. No matter how many times you watch the episodes, the writers have done such a wonderful job each time still feels ‘fresh’ because you pick up on little things that you missed previously.
We want more ‘fresh’ episodes to enjoy over and over. If NBC were to release even the first 13 episodes to DVD, they would make a killing on the DVD sales because at least 99% of the ever-growing fan base would be in line to buy it. If NBC brought back Journeyman in the fall, they would be astounded at the vast difference in viewer numbers compared to the Fall of 2007. If NBC wants to win back viewers and climb back up in the ranks of ‘good’ and ‘dependable’ networks, they should seriously consider bringing Journeyman back to their schedule.
They would be pleasantly surprised.