'Nuts To Nielsen!' Say Fans Of Canceled 'Jericho'

TAMPA - For most people, it's just a bummer when a TV company cancels their favorite show. But fans of the now defunct CBS show "Jericho" are taking the loss of their show a bit harder.

They're fighting back, and the fight is coming to, of all unlikely places, Oldsmar.

"Jericho" devotees plan to picket the local office of TV ratings company Nielsen at noon Tuesday, and dump 4,000 pounds of peanuts on the company's property. Why Nielsen? "Jericho" fans say Nielsen uses faulty methods to measure TV ratings, and those ratings numbers doomed their beloved show.

"It's an antiquated rating system that does not count 99.999 percent of actual TV viewers," said Jonathan Whitesell, a "Jericho" fan and organizer of the protest, referring to the sampling method Nielsen uses to calculate total viewing of a show.

It's not the first time fanatical TV fans have fought back against the loss of their show. "Star Trek," "Touched by an Angel" and other shows owe their survival to the uproar of fans who dumped Tabasco sauce, Snickers bars and Rice-A-Roni at TV network offices. But this is the first time such a fight has come to Nielsen's doorstep in Oldsmar, where it runs a technical center that crunches numbers from across the nation to calculate ratings.

Although customers routinely pressure companies to change their products - sometimes with big success - pleading with a company's vendors who have no decision-making power is unusual. Now Nielsen is faced with the potential brunt of viewer anger, and it can't do anything to change matters.

That's no deal-breaker for Whitesell.

Based in Boston, Whitesell has been organizing the Oldsmar protest through an e-mail campaign, Web sites and fan blogs - all centered around the theme "Nuts To Nielsen!"

Why peanuts?

Peanuts are an insider's reference to a "Jericho" character who responded "Nuts!" when asked to surrender.

All this hubbub is a bit baffling to Nielsen officials, who say they merely count the ratings that a TV show receives. No one has ever picketed a Nielsen location before, said company spokesman Gary Holmes.

"We respect the passion of the 'Jericho' fans, but the decision to cancel the show was made by the network, not by Nielsen," Holmes said in a statement. "We measure programming that is viewed live, on a video recorder and on a PC, and we are confident that our ratings provide a fair measure of what people are viewing."

"Jericho" fans join a long and colorful list of campaigns aimed at saving beloved shows.

The CW network was targeted by fans of the teenage alien theme show "Roswell," who sent thousands of bottles of Tabasco hot sauce - a favorite condiment of alien characters - to the network in protest when the show was put on the chopping block. The protest may have worked. The show was brought back for a third and final season.

The CBS show "Touched By An Angel" faltered in its first season, but fans went into an uproar and the show lasted eight seasons.

"Star Trek" was perhaps the first show successfully saved by fans when the 1966 series was canceled in its second season. Fans staged a successful letter-writing campaign.

"Jericho" may have longer odds.

"Jericho" premiered on CBS in September 2006 and ran for 22 episodes. It portrays residents of the fictional town Jericho, Kan., in the aftermath of nuclear attacks on several U.S. cities. The show was canceled in May 2007 amid low ratings. In protest, Jericho fans deluged CBS with calls, messages and 50,000 pounds of peanuts at a CBS headquarters.

The protest worked, at first. CBS officials reversed course because of "unprecedented support from the fans" and brought the show back in February for seven episodes, according to CBS officials. Still, the ratings didn't add up, and March 25 was the series finale.

The show attracted 6.2 million total viewers in its last seven episodes, according to Nielsen data. Compare that with "CSI" on CBS, which attracts 15.9 million viewers, and "American Idol," which attracted 26.6 million.

Although the show is gone, the protesters aren't. They're rallying support and scheduling pickets - ironically enough, through CBS' own Web site. They trade information about the show within a blog that has endured online despite the show's cancellation.

Adding to the drama, Whitesell and others hope to draw on recent criticism of Nielsen, which has cut back on employment in the Tampa Bay area. And they're willing to spend real money for the protest.

Mickey Freymuller, owner of Mickey's Peanuts in Palm Harbor, is supplying the nuts and already taken $5,000 from protest organizers to pay for 4,000 pounds, he said.

Freymuller redesigned his company's Web site so "Jericho" fans could order peanuts online for delivery directly to Nielsen, and offered special prices for "Nuts to Nielsen Save Jericho Peanuts" - $12.04 for a 10-pound bag or $60.24 for a 50-pound bag.

His company normally supplies peanuts to sports stadiums, restaurants and colleges. "We've not had anything like this," Freymuller said.

Still, it's unlikely CBS will change course.

"Without question, there are passionate viewers watching this program," CBS Entertainment President Nina Tassler said at the time the show was canceled, supposedly for good. "We simply wish there were more."

As for any peanuts that arrive at Nielsen next week, company officials say they're looking for food banks that will accept the nuts.