Tuesday, September 10, 2002
Note from Jennifer (Caitlin's taking a Sobe break)
Just found this on http://farscape.wdsection.com/. Caitlin calls this some of the most encouraging news she's heard yet. It's been passed along from someone working at the Sci-Fi channel:
"Hey it's me again. I tried to tell everyone on the scifi chat room what's up but too many which is ok. I spoke with my mole at Scifi in NYC and here are a couple of things that are going on:
(1) Scifi is totally to blame. They know that going into season five would be expensive and they wanted to pay less for the show, they went to EMTV and is strapped for cash they said no and SCIFI opted to get out. Scifi knew this well ahead of everyone, they employed a win-win situation, by this I mean their programming strategy. By constantly airing the show and ratings didn't go up they could claim that its core audience did not grow and vice versa. By changing time slots, the network hoped to increase ratings for SG1, a show that costs less to produce, they were implementing a preemptive strike blaming poor ratings but what happened was the opposite SG1 fans watched Farscape INCREASING its core base making the press release a lie. Numbers don't lie. Scifi did not plan to announce the cancellation of the show until mid or near the end of the season.
(2) The network execs told everyone not to say anything about this, DK,BB, & &RM all jumped the gun to try to let everyone know what was happening ASAP so that fan momentum would start.
(3) They are reading all emails, letters, faxes, and telegrams sent to the office but are throwing ones out that are vulgar and nasty. They are getting flowers, crackers and Farscape toys. My mole also told me that they don't mind calls as long as it's professional and polite. They will hang up on you if you start yelling and cussing. Everyone has a good chance to reach an exec or at least their assistant and they are more than happy to help you with any info. My source also suggested that all correspondence contain your full name not chat or BB name as well as some demographic info like your age, household income. If some fans are still in HS then use the parent's income, my source believes that Scifi is going to try to convince advertisers to pay for more advertising if it can show them the demographics thus willing to pay for a fifth season. This is very important, also to write to all of the sponsors and threaten to stop buying or using product. Mention in the letter that you bought their product after seeing a commercial aired during Farscape and if possible send the UNUSED product back to them. Don't forget a sponsor may make a variety of products that all of us can be using so look hard.
(4) start to email etc. to your local papers first. If they run a story a larger media outlet will most likely pick it up i.e. AP and call your local cable company and threaten them by telling them that you may switch to direct TV or satellite.
(5) Because of the leak Scifi knew what was coming so it was expected but not to this degree. They thought that only the BBs would be the only place to vent and did not expect such a huge backlash. However the suits think that this will fade by Wednesday so everyone has to keep the heat up at least a week or two or they won't take us seriously. My source said that you can mail, fax or email everyday and to reference the previous letter that was sent.
(6) Right now no one is talking to [any]one, network suits, Henson people, DK etc. there is a lot of anger and shock and betrayal as to what happened so there is an informal cooling off period."
That's it for now. Caitlin will be around shortly with news regarding the forthcoming RevolutionSF.com article.
|
|
