Used to be that when you wanted to air your grievances to a company or politician you had to sit down, get out a piece of paper, put it in the typewriter (or even hand write it!), seal it up in an envelope, dig around for a stamp, and eventually stuff it in the mailbox. It was a lot of work. So much work that when a few letters of protest arrived on some suit's desk, it meant something. A groundswell was occurring. Now, though, voicing your complaints is as easy as pressing a few buttons and making beep boop beeping sounds. Sure we have agency, but it's cheap and easy and it all generates a disproportionate, misleading amount of noise. But those crusty old network executives, who are shrewd and determined enough to endure a writers strike to protect their piece of an imaginary pie, but too out of it to understand anything else about the internet, take these noises as gospel truth. A campaign consisting of a few hundred emails and a couple of slapped together websites represents, in their eyes, at least ten million viewers.

Trouble is, they're really, really wrong. The rabidity of Jericho's fan base belied a plain and simple truth: no one, or at least not nearly enough people, had any interest in it. Its latest run of episodes has been poorly reviewed and mostly unseen. Oops! CBS took the internet at face value, rather than what it is: a bizarre place with no boundaries blocking a group of people from uniting over some weird, squirrely little cause. And the more these people are vindicated, the more they'll be encouraged to repeat the process for any of the silly little shows they like. Hell, even Cashmere Mafia has something of a Save the Show movement going on right now. I officially hate these campaigns. They're boring and useless and almost always are focused on some bad show that deserves to be canceled no matter what. Their clamoring never represents any actual viewer appetite for a particular program, just a few crazies with too much time on their hands. Whether it's an effort to be young and with-it or if it's just some perverted altruism, the networks simply need to stop paying attention to the internet. Nothing good can come out of this place. Except for this. Save this post. I mean it, please. Help.

"Wow! Over the past few weeks you have put forth an impressive and probably unprecedented display of passion in support of a prime time television series," CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler said in a letter to "Jericho" boosters. [...]

"You got our attention; your emails and collective voice have been heard," Tassler wrote, and seven episodes have been ordered for midseason 2007-08. "In success, there is the potential for more. But, for there to be more `Jericho,' we will need more viewers."

Fans must do their part to rally interest while the network does its job, she said. [...]

Another positive outcome of the fan campaign: CBS is donating the protest peanuts to charities, including one that sends care packages to troops overseas.

We're having difficulty remembering a network-audience dialogue as universally beneficial as this one: Jericho fans get additional episodes and the impression that CBS actually listens to them, CBS gets some good P.R. and a new revenue source by repackaging the first season DVD set with the bonus episodes as Jericho: The Ultimate Saved From Cancellation Collection, and our soldiers get many, many, many boxes of salted peanuts, just the snack you first want to reach for in 110° Iraq summer weather.

• CBS reverses decision to ax 'Jericho' [Yahoo/AP]

Multiple sources are telling me that CBS is thisclose to sealing a deal to bring Jericho back for at least eight episodes, possibly at mid-season.

My spies caution that this is in no way official, but it certainly sounds like it could be by day's end. It's now just a matter of signing the actors to new deals and, according to one insider, finding a new soundstage to house the show's sets.

While we couldn't be happier for the passionate Jericho fans and their nutty campaign (see—your voices really make a difference!), we nevertheless feel compelled to offer the requisite, sobering counterpoint: This one fan victory could set a dangerous precedent, particularly with lower-rated networks looking to CBS to set the pace of the primetime horse race, thereby turning the schedule into a TV recycling plant. The last thing NBC's new rock star Ben Silverman needs right now is to cloud his sunny vision by scrambling for the recent discard pile and resuscitating a long-forgotten offering based on one moving e-mail from a viewer in Tulsa who wrote, "Yeah, that kidnapping show didn't totally suck. Whatever happened to the kid in that, anyway?"

• Exclusive: Jericho on Verge of Renewal [TVGuide.com]
• Previously: 'Jericho' Fans Call Down Plague Of Peanuts Upon CBS Tormentors [Defamer]

NUTS! Save Jericho! Jericho fans unite! In addition to sending individual orders to CBS programming executives, as a Jericho fan you can now contribute money to massive shipments of nuts. NutsOnline will do our part by pooling monies and supplying nuts at a steep discount! At the end of each day we will tally dollars collected and ship out huge quantities of roasted peanuts in the shell! [...]

Why nuts? In the final episode Jake Green (Skeet Ulrich) borrowed the historic phrase "NUTS" in response to a final offer of surrender from a hostile neighboring town. CBS decided to cancel the show, and fans are uprising to save Jericho by sending, you got it, NUTS to CBS executives.

For those of you who would like to see the show return to CBS's slate in place of newer, sure-to-tank offerings like Dracula P.I., and yet are having a hard time connecting with a campaign built around Ulrich's quoting of a famous WWII kiss-off phrase, we direct you to a satellite campaign: Deaf blogger Banjo's World has written a heartfelt template letter to CBS, extolling Jericho's virtues—in particular its incorporation of a deaf character. Sure, it may not have the salty pizzazz of a forklift palate of roasted peanuts, but we think they'll get the point just the same.

• NUTS for Jericho [nutsonline.com]
• Save Jericho: The Letter-Writing Campaign [Banjo's World]