Fan Campaign/List

This page lists various Fan Campaigns.

Examples Wanted: Editors are encouraged to add more examples or a wider variety of examples.

20th Century

• Mama: Based on the novel Mama's Bank Account by Kathryn Forbes and the film I Remember Mama with Irene Dunne, Mama ran from 1949 to 1957. It was one of TV's first "institutions", with millions of families tuning in on Fridays. In 1956, CBS canceled Mama in response to sponsor Maxwell House's complaint that their ads weren't substantially increasing sales. The show's producer, Carol Irwin, headed a successful letter campaign.
• Star Trek: TOS - Save Star Trek -- 1967-68, a legendary fan campaign consisting of letters, '60s-activist-style protest demonstrations, and personal interactions, was led by producer Gene Roddenberry from behind the scenes. The second campaign in 1968-69 after re-cancellation was unsuccessful. There were subsequent campaigns pertaining to the various films, such as 1973's Open Letter by "S.T.A.B. Paramount" Regarding a Proposed Boycott of All Paramount Productions.
• Spectre (1977) -- a campaign to save Gene Roddenberry's project, at least one of the calls for fan action came from Susan Sackett (Roddenberry's assistant), see image on this page
• Space:1999 -- starting in 1977, unsuccessful attempts to bring the show back for a third season, see: The Space:1999 Society
• Clayton Moore and The Lone Ranger, 1980. Moore had played the Lone Ranger on television from 1949–1951 and 1954–1957 and in two theatrical films. When the series was cancelled, he began making personal appearances, TV guest appearances and commercials as the Ranger, often accompanied by Jay Silverheels (Mohawk) as Tonto. To generations of children and adults, Clayton Moore was the Lone Ranger, and he always portrayed the character with the respect due to a heroic role model. However, producer Jack Wrather, who owned all rights to the character, planned a new Lone Ranger film and didn't want Moore out there "undercutting" the role or giving the impression he'd be returning to play the Ranger. He got a court order forbidding Moore from future appearances and from wearing the iconic mask. This move proved to be a public relations disaster. Moore responded by changing his costume slightly and replacing the mask with Foster Grant wraparound sunglasses. Also, he counter-sued Wrather. He eventually won and was able to resume his appearances in costume, which he continued to do until shortly before his death. Wrather's movie, Legend of the Lone Ranger, starring Klinton Spilsbury, was a complete failure, partly due to the huge amount of negative publicity around Wrather's treatment of Moore.

"A SIMPLE PLEA FOR HELP, that's all. "Who's that man behind the Foster Grants?" is clever but it's also pathetic. Chances are if you're reading this zine you didn't grow up watching the Lone Ranger, but at least you've seen it. Clayton Moore provided us with endless entertainment and enjoyment. Various people have already written pounds of verbage [sic] on how and why. All I can add is that if you saw it and felt it, it should mean something to you. The least it should mean is a 15¢ stamp and 10 minutes of your time. Clayton Moore asks precious little of the Wrather Corp. that has made fortunes off of him. He's not demanding to star in the Lone Ranger remake. He's not demanding anything. All he asks is to be allowed to continue to do his Lone Ranger personal appearances (his main source of income now) in a mask which Wrather has now forbidden him to wear. One polite letter of protest would certainly help him now. Write: Wrather Corp. [address redacted] if you feel that Clayton Moore is entitled to retain at least a fragment of the dignity his characterization of the Lone Ranger was imbrued [sic] with."

• Cagney and Lacey - 1983 letter writing campaign. Susan Faludi discusses this in her book Backlash (Random House, 1991; 2006 updated edition), about the history of modern feminism, social and cultural responses. Created by Barbara Corday and Barbara Avedon, Cagney and Lacey had taken six years to sell. Audiences loved it, but CBS executives objected that the characters "seemed masculine", replaced dark-haired Meg Foster with blonde Sharon Gless, and finally canceled it despite thousands of positive fan letters. Again, CBS programming execs, not the audience, were too uncomfortable with realistic women and realistic situations, let alone realistic women police whom they perceived as "dykes." CBS was immediately inundated with tens of thousands of letters demanding its return. Tyne Daly won an Emmy for Best Actress in a Dramatic Series, and the show scored number one in the ratings during summer reruns. CBS backed off and put the show back on. It ran a total of seven seasons (1982-88).
• Beauty and the Beast -- starting in 1987, escalating a few years later -- examples: Help Save the Beast (1987, more episodes), White Roses for Catherine (the death of Catherine), many other campaigns regarding the third season
• Star Trek: The Next Generation - Ultimately successful. Throughout the second season (1988-89), fans campaigned to "Bring Back Bev!" (Gates McFadden's character of Dr Beverly Crusher, who had been unexpectedly replaced by Diana Muldaur as Dr Katherine Pulaski). Although Gene Roddenberry had claimed at conventions that he would not be swayed by fan opinions, when Muldaur become unavailable for the first few episodes of Season Three, McFadden was suddenly invited back instead, and her character continued throughout the rest of the series and the four TNG movies.
• Twin Peaks - In 1991, near the end of the show's second season - mostly failed. ABC did air the remaining episodes of season 2, but the network would not agree to a third season, leaving fans with a cliffhanger ending until it was revived as a limited series on Showtime in 2017
• Forever Knight - 1996–? - Kickstart the Knight - unsuccessful attempt to get the show back on the air
• The Sentinel - June 1998 - Support Our Sentinel - limited success with an 8 episode 4th season
• Deepwater Black - January 1998 - - unsuccessful letter writing campaign

21st Century

• Roswell - 2000 - "Tabasco sauce" campaign. The aliens in this show like to drink Tabasco sauce, so fans sent in mini bottles to protest its cancellation after season 1. - Success for renewal on WB for 2nd season and for UPN picking up a 3rd season after WB cancelled.
• Felicity - 2000 - successful -- a strong Internet presence and an extensive letter-writing campaign helped convince the network to bring the show back for a third season
• Stargate SG-1 - 2002 - See Save Daniel Jackson - success - Daniel came back in Season 7 (see Save SG-1)
• Dark Angel - 2002 - Barcode Campaign - unsuccessful
• Farscape - 2002 - letters, advertising - partial success (four hour mini-series Farscape: The Peacekeeper Wars that wrapped up the fourth season cliffhanger)
• Invisible Man - April 2002 - Save Invisible Man - unsuccessful
• Angel 2004 - unsuccessful, despite the fan website, SaveAngel.org, which hit 1.5 million page views and 400,000 unique visitors only a few months later. Fans wrote letters to media and to the network, bought ads in trade publications, created message boards, rented a mobile billboard to drive around L.A. with the message “We Will Follow Angel to Hell...or Another Network" and organized a rally at the WB studio in Burbank, CA
• Arrested Development - 2005 -- success -- the well-organized Save Our Bluths campaign sent banana crates to the network and encouraged fans to write “strongly-worded” letters to Fox, which were instrumental in helping the show return for a third and final season
• Stargate: Atlantis - October 2006 - Save Carson Beckett - efforts included a rally with a pipe band and "girls flashing Carson Beckett on their butts" - success (Carson returned in Seasons 4 and 5)
• Jericho - May/June 2007 - Nuts for Jericho - success (7 episode 2nd season)
• Veronica Mars - 2007 - the show did not come back for a fourth season, despite fans sending the network 10,000 Mars Bars, as well as fake bills inscribed with “Veronica Mars Is Smarter Than Me”—a reference to Season 1’s “Clash of the Tritons”
• Moonlight (TV) - 2008 - unsuccessful
• The X-Files - I Want To Believe "Rette seine Stimme mit deiner Stimme!" (Save his voice with your voice) petition - 2008 - unsuccessful. Petition by the German-Speaking Fandom that wanted to prevent that David Duchovny's German voice actor Benjamin Völz is replaced with another voice actor.
• Chuck - April/May 2009 - Have a Heart, Renew Chuck - success (3rd season)
• Due South - 2009–ongoing - Due South Lives
• Torchwood - 2009–ongoing - Saving Ianto Jones - postcard and coffee campaign, Cardiff shrine, and many other activities
• Firefly - 2011 - After Nathan Fillion, an actor on Firefly, made a comment that if he won the lottery, he'd buy the rights to Firefly and continue the series, fans swung into action
• A-Team - 2011 - Make an A-Team movie sequel.
• Eureka - 2011 - Within hours of announcement the show would be canceled, a couple of Facebook campaigns were launched. Ongoing. Funny fan comment: Eureka has more Facebook fans than SyFy, the network canceling it.
• Glee - 2011 - Get Max Adler to sing in Season 3. Jars of Nutella were sent, along with letters and a video package to the cast members in honour of this ambition.
• SWAT Kats - 2011 ongoing - SK Revival letter writing campaign.
• Friday Night Lights - 2008/2009 - Whether it was the fan campaigns or not, the show was given three additional, though shorter, seasons. See Friday Night Lights#Keeping FNL on the air.
• STOP the destruction of Fanfiction.net! -- (2012) -- not successful
• XFilesNews' XF3 Army Believe in the Future Campaign
  • #XF3 (September 2011)
  • 10,013 photos for a greenlight (2009 - Januar 2011)
  • 10/13 Greenlight Baby (September 2012)
• #SaveTheCloneWars a fan campaign to renew Star Wars: The Clone Wars following the announcement in March 2013 that Disney would not be continuing production of the series following their acquisition of Lucasfilm the previous year. The production team was permitted to complete some of the episodes that had already entered production for Season 6, releasing them as a Netflix exclusive under the title "The Lost Missions" in March 2014. Showrunner Dave Filoni has credited the campaign with helping to boost the number of episodes they were able to release. On July 19, 2018, LucasFilm announced that the show would be renewed for a seventh and final season, confirming the series' return using the hashtag #CloneWarsSaved.
• Lexa Deserved Better - 2016 ongoing - campaign to raise awareness of the harmful effects of the "Bury Your Gays" trope in response to the lesbian character Lexa being killed off in The 100.
• The X-Files Season X and Season XI "akteXSyncho" petition - 2016 -2018 - unsuccessful. Petition by the German-Speaking Fandom that wanted to prevent that David Duchovny's German voice actor Benjamin Völz is again replaced with yet another voice actor for the new episodes of the Event Series (see als 2008 "Rette seine Stimme mit deiner Stimme!" campaign).
• #RenewSense8 or #BringBackSense8, for the Netflix series Sense8 (2017). Initially not successful, and fans received a strongly worded but sympathetic open letter from Netflix telling them to stop the campaign. However, a few weeks after the open letter, Lana Wachowski confirmed that Sense8 would be brought back for a 2-hour finale episode. The finale was released in 2018, and the fan campaign acknowledged in mainstream media reporting on Sense8's cancellation and renewal.
• Family Guy had two of these:
  • In protest of the show's second cancellation in 2001, fans not only sent letters and circulated petitions but sent baby food and diapers for Stewie to the Fox network in order to save the show.
  • When Brian Griffin was killed off in season 12, fans circulated petitions and created hashtags demanding the dog's revival. This case is a subversion, however, as tweets from Seth McFarlane revealed that Brian's death was meant to be a fake-out all along, inciting anger in fans.
• Voltron: Legendary Defender has had two, both in response to mass fan disappointment over the final two seasons:
  • A petition was circulated demanding an apology from Lauren Montgomery and Joaquim dos Santos regarding the deaths of |Adam and Ezor, two LGBT characters, as well as thinly-veiled demands to make Klance canon.
  • After the final season dropped, fans were disappointed and noted that there was a distinct drop in audio and animation quality compared to the previous seasons. Numerous voice actors and animators expressing surprise and disappointment at what was depicted in the season led fans to the conclusion that the entire season had been edited in post-production, and they started the Free VLDS8 movement demanding the uncut version be released to the public. Critics of the campaign consider it a failure after an interview where the creators appeared to indicate that no such version existed, however some continue to support the movement with the argument that the creators were compelled to say that under threat of legal repercussions if they violated their NDAs.
• Star Trek: Discovery - Growing approval of Season Two characters Captain Christopher Pike, Spock and Number One, saw the creation of online fan petitions requesting that CBS consider a Pike-led TV series. As of May 2019, a "change.org" petition had over 11,000 signatures. Pike actor Anson Mount, who had been signed only for the Season Two story arc, responded positively to these campaigns, as did Ethan Peck (Spock).

Other

A media depiction of a fan campaign occurs in the Belgian children's book Petite Abeille et la Television by Tamara Danblon (published January 1970). Little Bee and her friend Serge don't like the stories in the kids' show "Ugly Jojo", so Bee's mother tells them to write to the station and ask them either to improve the show or cancel it in favor of animal documentaries. She also reminds Bee that she doesn't have to watch shows she dislikes just because a good show comes on immediately after it.