Last week’s reading, entitled “Get a Life” by Jenkins, discusses the lives of crazed fans that are obsessed with various media texts. In explaining media fandom, Jenkins talks about the relationship between fans and producers of television shows. He says, “The history of media fandom is at least in part the history of a series of organized efforts to influence programming decisions – some successful, most ending in failure.” Here, Jenkins states an example of fandom where fans of popular television shows band together to form a mass network to get a show that was cancelled back on the air. Usually these “organized efforts” fail in influencing network executives and producers to bring a show back to life. However, some movements have worked in reversing network decisions.
The most recent example that this idea applies to is the CBS show Jericho.
http://www.eonline.com/news/article/index.jsp?uuid=1d118607-738d-4471-9278-1807ac88f4ab
The article above illustrates Jenkins’ idea of fandom. Fans of the popular series were upset when CBS executives decided to pull the plug on the show after putting it on hiatus for a few months and then playing it against American Idol’s timeslot. The fans thought that the network never gave the show a chance and therefore decided to take action. The fans formed a grassroots effort by sending 25 tons of peanuts to CBS offices in New York and Los Angeles. Nutsonline.com was formed and allowed Jericho fans to gather and donate money to send shipments of peanuts to CBS offices. (The nuts were symbolic of a phrase used in the season finale of the show). After dozens of deliveries of nuts, CBS finally issued a statement announcing that Jericho would return to this year’s mid-season lineup. It began airing on February 12 and fans couldn’t be happier. This situation applies to Jenkins’ argument in that the influencing of programming decisions plays a part in the history of media fandom.
1 comment:
I agree with your argument about Jenkins idea of fandom. I think your media example is great because it was such a well-known story. Jericho was reintroduced into primetime because of the outrage of fans, which demonstrates various ideas from throughout this class. Without the technology we have today, that sort of uprising from fans would not have been possible.
However, are Jericho fans like the fans that Jenkins describes in his essay? My impression of his kinds of fans were basically all like Trekkies-- ones who surrounded every aspect of their lives with an obsession for a specific media text. I think you would agree with me that Jericho fans were sad about the show's missing entertainment value more than the fact that they would no longer have a show to obsess over.
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