I just read over at AgencySpy about the fan campaign to save Chuck and bring it back to NBC for a third season next fall.
Subway has been a big supporter of Chuck over the last two years — and signed on for a third season despite the fact that NBC hasn’t. Watch the video above, taken recently, in which the show’s star Zachary Levi leads a group of 600 fans to a Subway and they apparently all get sandwiches in a show of posterity (and well, being all supportive makes a dude hungry, so). The “buy a footlong” thing is meant to show Subway how thankful Chuck’s supporters are for their support, or something. They’re calling it ‘Chuck v. the Footlong’ — it’s a send-up to the program’s episode titles, which are all “Chuck v The something or other”. Clever!
I’m not an expert on fan-driven campaigns to save tv shows that are on the cancellation bubble (though I do feel like an inordinate number of shows I like are canceled), but this one seems smarter than most to me. Rather than the standard issue signed petitions to the networks that circulate this time every year, these folks targeted the real lynchpin of a show’s continuation: Its finances.
Showing a groundswell of fan support in petition form — in essence, promising the network continued viewing of the show and, by extension, better ratings — doesn’t always seem to pan out. (Ratings for Friday Night Lights, for example, are still not great, despite a vocal fan base.) The people who like a show might be vocal, but that doesn’t usually translate into ratings that allow the network to make a buck. Even a gushing letter from a big tv critic is only going to go so far.
Good primetime tv is expensive to make, and if the return on that investment doesn’t make sense to the money men at the network, then odds are, it won’t return. There are only so many “critically acclaimed” shows that a network can keep around before the ROI equation doesn’t make sense any more.
And there’s the crux of it for me: Fans have gotta be more successful if they instead give support in a way that looks to positively affect the show’s financial situation. Take, say, 600 folks over to a Subway and get them to buy a sandwich. Smart.
Rumor has it, the campaign is having an effect on NBC brass and the odds are on Chuck to return next fall… We’ll see what happens.
[x-posted from House of Naked]
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