UPDATE:  I appreciate all the comments, guys.

I didn’t dig as deep as I guess I should have.  I DID try to contact Jeffrey Braverman at the number provided on the page, but didn’t get an answer there.  In the archived blog on the NUTS for Jericho site, they do discuss what will happen with all of those nuts:

I just received confirmation from CBS that the peanuts will be donated to our troops in Iraq and Afghanistan and possibly food banks, homeless shelters, and maybe even the Bronx Zoo.

I wish there had been something about that on the main page there, before you actually buy the nuts.  So, sorry for misspeaking yesterday.  Go buy some nuts.

ORIGINAL POST:
I’ve had a few people asking me why I haven’t done any coverage on the recent “NUTS for Jericho” campaign, so let me elaborate on that a bit.

‘Jericho’ was one of my favorite new shows of the season last year.  While I agree that it did hit a bit of a slump mid-season, which wasn’t helped by the ridiculously long hiatus that the show took, the show did manage to remain compelling virtually every week.  It didn’t pull in huge ratings by anyone’s standards, but it did as good a job as any show can do when up against a behemoth like ‘American Idol’.  And when the news came in that it was not going to be in CBS’s schedule next season, I was incredibly upset, especially considering the cliffhanger that the finale left us with.

The NUTS for Jericho campaign comes from a story that was told in the ‘Jericho’ finale.  In World War II, a U.S. general was surrounded by the Nazi army, who sent him an offer to surrender.  His one-word response:  “Nuts.”  This has become the battle cry of Jericho fans who demand that the show be picked back up.  The website Jericho Lives reads like a newsletter for a rebellion, with daily “Mission Orders” and inspirational quotes from the likes of Winston Churchill about never giving up in the face of overwhelming odds.

Taking it to the next step, several fans have entered into the NUTS for Jericho campaign, in which they purchase quantities of roasted peanuts to be sent to CBS headquarters.  At the time of this writing, the NUTS for Jericho site has sold 14,154 pounds of nuts, which will be sent to CBS in protest of the show’s cancellation.  That’s $19,377 worth of peanuts!  (Actually, at the time that this story was posted, I refreshed the page…the actual count is now 14,396 lbs at $19,707.)

Look, there are many things that a fan can do to protest to a network.  Sign a petition.  Write or call that network and express your feelings (civilly).  Find out who the biggest advertisers are on the show, and give them your business, then write them and tell them that you’re giving them business because of the show.  These are all things that I believe in, and have done in the past.

But don’t waste your money.  The sensationalism of thinking about 7 tons of nuts laying on CBS’s doorstep is, I’ll admit, kind of satisfying.  But at the end of the day, that’s a LOT of food that could have gone to feed the hungry, and a lot of wasted that could have done a lot of good elsewhere. 

I believe that we need to start a new campaign in which, rather than buying something that will be rotting in a landfill this time next week, we turn our efforts to something more substantial.

That’s where you, dear readers, come in.  What can we do that will send a message to CBS that we want this show back, but, at the same time, will allow us to be sensible with our money?  Maybe have some kind of set up where the money is donated to a charity, but have it known that it’s done in the name of protesting for Jericho? 

This campaign shows something that I’ve always known…when fans set their minds on something, they can have a tremendous impact.  But it’s time to show that we can have a smart impact, too.

I’ll have the full review up in the morning, but here’s a quick thought about what I think the finale means for next season of Lost.

At the end of the finale, we find that what we thought were flashbacks were actually flashforwards, and that our Losties have been rescued and are back in the real world.  But the real world hasn’t been so nice to our boy Jack, and he wants to go back to the island.

So, my prediction…next season, the action will take place off the island, with the flashbacks occurring on the island, and what led up to where we saw Jack in the finale.

I have absolutely no basis for this…just pure speculation.  Man, what a mind-blowing finale.  See you guys in the morning.

Michael from Forever Geek had me on  last week to chat a bit about the season finales of ‘Heroes’ and ‘Lost’. 

In addition to the TV news we talk about, he and Dave cover a wide spectrum of topics, so head on over and check out my smooth southern drawl.  (FYI, you don’t realize you have that until you hear it for yourself.)

WizardUniverse has posted up a great interview with the producers of the two best dramas on TV…’Lost’s Damon Lindelof and ‘Heroes’ Tim Kring.  The two producers worked together on ‘Crossing Jordan’ before Lindelof went off to do ‘Lost’. 

From the article:

KRING: There is no way a show like “Heroes” could’ve come along if “Lost” had not come along before it, not only for what it did in teaching the audience how to absorb a giant show like this, but especially what it did in teaching the networks how to do a show like this.

LINDELOF: That’s very kind of you to say. And also, I feel like another part of the genesis of “Heroes” and “Lost” is that Tim and I are both interested in the same kind of stories. I’m sort of more a comic/fantasy/sci-fi geek than he is, but at the same time both of us spin on this axis of destiny, spiritual questions and “What is our place on the Earth?”[…]People started comparing the shows right out of the gate, for the obvious reasons. The “Heroes” pilot says, “This means something.” It wasn’t posing big mysteries, but the characters were saying, “What does this mean? What is my place in all of this?” They weren’t saying, “How did I get my powers?” They were saying, “Why did I get my powers?” Philosophically, both shows started feeling the same, and they had big, sprawling casts. There were mysteries and exciting serialized cliffhangers and unexpected twists. “Heroes” was incredibly daring, and never, I think, in a derivative way. One thing I’ve never heard anyone say to my face, or even read, is that “Heroes” is a “Lost” rip-off. Tim was able to watch “Lost”—as a fan of it, he had seen two seasons of the show as he was writing the “Heroes” pilot—and he was able to make certain decisions about what he liked and what he didn’t like.

They do a great job of pointing out the similarities in both of the shows.  Head on over and read the full interview.

News came in yesterday that Jenna Fischer, who plays Pam on ‘The Office’, fell down a marble staircase, at, I assume, the NBC Upfronts on Monday.  The fall fractured her back in four places.

Kristin at eOnline had this to say:

Jenna was hospitalized Monday night and is now resting in her hotel room until she can regain enough strength to fly home to Los Angeles. She is expected to recover in about four to six weeks…I’ve actually seen the very stairwell where the accident happened (though I was not there at the time) and can tell you it is incredibly steep, especially for someone wearing high heels.

It’s said that she will be back on her feet in time to shoot the forth season of ‘The Office’.  Jeez, a broken back, and back on her feet in six weeks?  She’s a resilient little thing.

ABC was the first network, by my memory, to really embrace online distribution for their programming.  I remember when they first announced that they would release shows on iTunes and also that they would stream them for free online.  The idea seemed revolutionary at the time, but now it’s strange when a network doesn’t stream their programming *cough*FOX*cough*.

Now, Multichannel News is reporting that in July, ABC.com will begin to stream select shows in HD format. 

ABC.com’s HD channel will feature a limited amount of content in from such series as Lost, Desperate Housewives, Grey’s Anatomy and Ugly Betty. When ABC launches its new season in September, the site will offer a “more robust” HD lineup.

I hope that the industry will follow ABC like it has in the past.  I can only get ABC and CBS in HD in my area, so I would love to be able to check out ‘Heroes’ or ‘24′ in HD online.

May is such a bittersweet time for TV watchers.  That’s when shows pull out all the stops, and we can expect that we’ll get some GREAT programming.  On the other hand, though, we can rest assured that we’ve got a pretty long dry spell ahead (in the case of 24 and Lost, a very long spell, since both will not come back until 2008 for one uninterrupted season). 

With things drawing to a close for this season, here is when you can expect your favorite shows to bow out…some for a few months, some forever.  All shows will run for their regularly scheduled time in their regular slots, unless otherwise noted.

May 9
- Jericho - CBS

May 10
- My Name Is Earl - NBC

May 13
-7th Heaven - CW

May 15
-Gilmore Girls - CW

May 17
-ER - NBC
-Grey’s Anatomy - ABC
-The Office - NBC - 1 hour finale
-Scrubs - NBC - 1 hour finale

May 20
-Desperate Housewives - ABC

May 21
-Heroes - NBC

May 23
-American Idol - FOX - 2 hour finale
-Lost - ABC - 2 hour finale

May 28
-24 - FOX

I know, it’s hard to believe that a comedy based on an insurance company commercial depicting cavemen in modern times could be anything less than the most spectacular 22 minutes of television ever.  But, apparently, they managed to screw this up. 

Now comes the most mind numbing, stupendously stupid and astoundingly misguided part of this fiasco: The creators have tried to infuse social satire by making the show an allegory for prejudice. They draw astoundingly leaden parallels to every minority group in the world without a laugh in sight. It’s jaw dropping horrendous and actually makes “American Dad’s” lunkheaded topicality seem sophisticated.

Head over to AICN to read the full review.

I’ll start with this.  Wednesday nights are my favorite TV night.  I anticipate all day long being able to plop down in my recliner and watch Idol, Jericho, and then top it off with Lost.  It means that the week is finally on its downhill slope, and things are right with the world.

So, last night, while I’m getting my son ready for bed, I get a text message from my buddy Michael of AppleGazette and ForeverGeek that said simply “Just saw Lost.  Awesome episode.”  Great.  I really needed to be more excited about Wednesday night.  It was late, so I decided to forgo Jericho and jump straight to Lost.  So, with the munchkin tucked in, I fired up the old DVR and started up Lost…to be greeted with the most feared image for an avid TV fan…the weather map.

To make a long story a little shorter, we had some pretty severe storms in Texas last night.  The most that my area really saw of it was a lot of rain and some pretty strong winds.  But my local ABC affiliate decided that they needed to talk about the weather across the entire state.  Now, I don’t have a problem with this…if a tornado is touching down on my front lawn, yeah, I’d kind of like a heads up.  But to break into my programming for twenty minutes to tell me that a little town 40 miles away is experiencing PEA SIZED HAIL!!!  That just ticks me off.  And, apparently, my storm was brought to me by the new Toyota Tundra, because the only time they broke from weather coverage was when they went to commercials.  Not great.

So, I had to get up at 6:30 this morning to check it out on ABC.com.  I usually watch the show Wednesday night, go to bed and let it marinate, then wake up in the morning, check my notes, and write my review.  So the review may be a little bit late today.

Have you always wanted a General Lee just for yourself?  Do you have $2 million and change laying around?  If so, this could be your lucky day.

 Bo Duke himself, John Schneider, put the classic speedster up on eBay and at press time, it’s drawn a whopping $2,302, 100.  The auction ends May 4 at 10:02 PDT.  From the description:

The most famous model of the most famous car in the world! This car was named by TV Land in 2004 as the most famous car in Television History. And this is the exact car that they gave that prestigious award to. This car has done a lot for me over the last 10 years and now it can be a part of your personal collection.

Also, at the end, he says this:

As to picking up the car, the buyer will be responsible for all costs associated with picking up and shipping if any of this car.

Personally, if someone just paid me $2 mil for a car, I don’t care how classic, I might be willing to kick in a couple grand to get it to them.  I’m just sayin’.