Blood Ties Returns in the U.S. of A.

APPARENTLY, IF you have an account with the U.S. Itunes store, (which normally means you have to have a U.S. Billing address, he said, hoping that the intrepid would be intrigued enough by the specific wording to explore other options, but sadly cognizant of the fact that most won't; or worse, will send me emails which I will not answer asking me how they could become members of the aforementioned store) you can now download Episode 13 of Blood Ties, which Lifetime still annoyingly calls the "Season 2 premiere."

I think it's also streaming on the Lifetime site.

Blood Ties returns to Lifetime for 10 all-new episodes starting Friday night at 11pm ET -- including the three that I wrote or co-wrote (We shot them as episodes 17, 18, and 21, so for purposes of Lifetime, they'll probably call them Season 2, Ep 5, 6 and 9. You do the math and tell me when they're on.)

For Canadian viewers, you're now only about 3 or 4 weeks behind the U.S. airing of the show.

When I saw Susanne Daniels, Lifetime's president at Banff back in June, she intimated that the ratings weren't that high for the show, but the paid Itunes downloads were significant.

Now you can see the Itunes download chart entering the calculus when people start talking about other shows. My guess is that it is a factor that's being watched more and more.

Lately, I've been getting a ton of email from people asking about a real second season of Blood Ties, and what's happening with it. In that persistent way of the genre fan, I know that anything I say will be parsed and re-parsed, and will most likely spark twenty or thirty follow up questions, none of which I can probably answer, even if I did know anything. So right now, I'm going to preface what I write very carefully: I have no absolute, concrete insider knowledge. I know nothing for certain. I can give you my personal opinion, which does not represent the views of anyone, or any company connected with the making, distribution, or televisual presentation of Blood Ties. The following is the sum total of what I have to say on the subject of a Blood Ties renewal. I apologize in advance for not being able to answer any of the questions that will start filling my mailbox five seconds after I hit 'post.' Most of them, I won't know the answers to, and none of them, could I answer even if I did. I hope you understand, and if you don't understand, well, then, sorry. Best I can do.

Okay.

My feeling is that for Blood Ties to be renewed for a real second season by Lifetime, with an investment that makes it possible to continue the show, the following things would need to happen:

1. Ratings for the second ten episodes are stronger than, or comparable to, the ratings for the first 12 eps. (Comparable would be amazing, since it's in a later timeslot.)
2. The overall Friday night lineup on Lifetime -- Lisa Williams, America's Psychic Challenge, and Blood Ties, does really well.
   
3. BT holds or even builds on the ratings of its lead in. That would be very good.
   
4. Strong ratings from women 18-49. That would not hurt a bit.
5. Blood Ties once again becomes one of the most-downloaded shows on Itunes. That wouldn't hurt, either.

There are lots of people who have speculated "what it means" that Lifetime has taken action A or action B.

They're all pulling that stuff out of the air. They don't know "what it means." I don't know what it means.

If three weeks from now, Blood Ties is number one on the Itunes Store download chart, and the Friday night airings on Lifetime are pulling equal or better numbers than in the spring, and beating or holding steady with the psychic stuff on before it, well, that might just mean something.

Or it might not.

TeeVee's funny that way.

Horror is Sccaarrry Work...

So the new issue of Canadian Screenwriter is out on the stands now, and the cover article by Vern Smith is up at the Writers Guild of Canada site. The article features extensive conversations with two of my Blood Ties compatriots, Peter Mohan and (Evil) Dennis Heaton:

Although a fan, Peter Mohan had never written about vampires when he browsed the horror section of a Toronto bookstore 10 or 12 years ago. There, he found a novel about a cop and vampire searching for demons downtown, and said, “Hold it, I like all those things.”

Flash forward, and Mohan is showrunning Blood Ties, adapting Tanya Huff’s “Blood” novels for the small screen. The series–which debuted on Lifetime in the U.S. in March, and will eventually air on CHUM in Canada–revolves around Vicki Nelson, a cop turned private detective suffering from a degenerative eye disease, and her love interest, a 450-year-old vampire. Upon said revelations, the focus of her agency becomes more about ghost-busting and less about fraud and adultery. But as appealing as the gist of it was the day Mohan read the back-cover copy inside Book City in Toronto’s Annex, the kicker was that this story was set nearby. And above all else, it meant the job of establishing normalcy would be a little more seamless in giving way to supernatural revelations.

“This is a quintessential Canadian show in a way that many others aren’t because we don’t push a Canadian agenda,” Mohan says. “It’s just a cool story that happens to occur here. We can make shows that travel with real streets and locations in establishing shots. It’s just centred in this place to ground this world.”

Previously, Mohan worked on such shows as Due South and Mutant X and wrote scripts for La Femme Nikita, PSI Factor, and Highlander. As for horror, he’d written episodes of Friday the 13th: the series, and produced FOX TV’s Eerie Indiana: The Next Dimension. He’s also been working on a “kickass” vampire feature film over the past few years. The important part was that Mohan was already up to speed on Huff’s Blood franchise, as well as the genre’s hallmarks, when Kaleidoscope Entertainment serendipitously came calling.

“I’ve liked a lot of horror writers–King at times, McCammon, Clive Barker’s books of blood,” Mohan says. “I still remember as a young kid reading ‘Dracula’–the texture of the paper, an onion-skin paper, it was so affecting.”

Personally, Mohan sees the genre through a psychological lens filled with fears about life, death, intimacy, and generally “opening oneself up.” In terms of the evolution of Blood Ties, he describes a larger story arc involving fate, Vicki, her new partner, the vampire, and her former boyfriend/partner on the Toronto police force.

(Above, Peter Mohan works hard at his desk. He may be reading a network notes email. But he's probably on YouTube, because inspiration is hard, bitches. Below at right, Peter Mohan and Dennis Heaton in my office at Blood Ties. You can tell we're talking about something important because Peter is holding a real live BT script in his hand.)

“I’ve done 450 hours of TV, often having to pretend Toronto is Chicago, New York, wherever, so it’s great to write a show where they’re chasing monsters in the Annex,” Mohan says. “That’s the crazy thing about horror. The more you ground the story in something mundane, commonplace, the more you open your eyes to another level. By setting this in a very realistic Toronto with realistic cops who never thought there was anything like this, there’s a whole new world. Even cold cases that seemed insoluble–suddenly they’re looking at things differently.”

For Dennis Heaton, who also worked on Blood Ties, helping audiences establish normalcy was also job one with Fido, a zombie feature that debuted at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. In Fido, it was a 1950s fictional small town, Willard, whereas Blood Ties is contemporary. In either case, Heaton describes a mandatory process of making that world as ordinary as possible.“You want to ground your audience so that when your character moves into the supernatural and then the unreal, they start to have reactions to that world, and your audience is having the same reaction,” Heaton says.

“You set it up and here’s your real world and now you’re faced with a vampire and your characters going through disbelief until it’s proven. You draw your audience in through your protagonist. If you’re set in a fantastic world, then your audience is going to have a certain disconnection from reality.”

Adapting all that horror
Blood Ties is also an adaptation for the small screen, so slicing the pie among a group of writers that included the author was another trick entirely.

With author Huff writing one episode, Mohan says the Blood Ties crew stayed true to the central literary dynamic by having the author in on story meetings and pitch sessions.

“Given the time constraints of television production and how quickly you have to get a script turned around, it’s better to have so many hands on deck,” adds Heaton. “You put your script forward and you’re getting feedback from maybe five or six people. You still have to filter that information, but it helps you focus the script faster.

“When you’ve got six people and they’re all saying this doesn’t work, you know it doesn’t work. Then you also have that assistance in finding out how to improve it and get it done, so your writing time is reduced from two or three weeks to three or four days because there are so many people cooking the script with you.”

Still, putting literature on TV can be brutal on the original artifact, so what about having the author in on the deed?

“Tanya’s been really good with us in the sense that these are her characters and she has certain feelings about how they’re produced,” says Heaton. “She gave Peter a lot of freedom to transform it from her literary world into television. It was a positive experience to work with her and get notes from her about whether we’re deviating from her course, because she also understands the things that have to change.”

As for the rest of the process, Mohan describes it as controlled chaos, saying, “You had to be writer and audience at the same time, and you had to be a hard audience. To win people over we had to bring them along by creating something emotionally real. Vicki is a hard sell to the supernatural. Bit by bit, she becomes more exposed to proof. If she’s accepted it, I think our audience will accept it. By that point, I think they will be invested in her character and her entanglements.”

(Above, Dennis Heaton and Travis McDonald in a notes session in Peter's office. You can see that we've failed to keep Travis awake.)

Fan Campaigns, Again.

I'M QUOTED TODAY in an article Kate Taylor has written in the Globe and Mail about the Save JPOD campaign that's currently underway. It's mostly because of my canonical Guide to Save Our Show Campaigns, which seems to turn up on this or that fangroup every few days now.

With the advent of e-mail and now the rise of Facebook and on-line petitions, they have become deceptively easy to wage, lulling fans into false confidence about their numbers.

"Back in the days of Star Trek, people had to write letters. There were flyers, they went to conventions, they had phone trees," said Denis McGrath, a Canadian screenwriter who blogs about television. "Nowadays, it's easier, but it is also more myopic.... They are only talking to people who have drunk the Kool-Aid."

He advises outraged fans to reach out beyond their narrow on-line constituency and to write polite letters explaining why they liked the show, trying to highlight their demographic desirability as viewers. Better yet, they should write advertisers telling them they saw the ads and even tried the products. Angry letters insulting network programmers, deconstructing the ratings and criticizing replacement shows are less effective, and mountains of stuff only get the mailroom mad at you, he believes.

"I worked on a vampire show," he said, referring to Blood Ties, a Canadian series now in limbo with its American broadcaster after two seasons, "and all I could think was somebody is going to start sending blood through the mail and that will be the end of it."

The Blood Ties crack that I made was relying on an old joke I've made for months - and was in advance of me hearing about this campaign, via Tanya Huff's site.

BLOOD TIES FANS RECYCLE FOR SIGHT

As spring cleaning gets under way, Blood Ties Fans are asking people to look through dresser drawers and closets for used eyeglasses and donate them to the Lions Recycle For Sight program.

During the month of May, the Blood Ties Fans Give Back Lions Club Drive will be collecting used prescription eyeglasses and prescription and non-prescription sunglasses as part of a unique recycling program. The collected glasses will be cleaned and prepared for distribution in developing countries where eye care is often unaffordable and inaccessible.

“We need everyone to donate their used eyeglasses,” said Candy Burke, spokesperson for the Blood Ties Drive. “In most developing countries, an eye exam can cost as much as one month’s wages and a single eye doctor may serve a community of hundreds of thousands of people.”

The drive is an International effort with fans participating from all over the world. The donated glasses will be shipped to Lions Eyeglass Recycling Centers where they will be cleaned, categorized by prescription and prepared for distribution by Lions and other groups.

To donate used glasses, including sunglasses and reading glasses, pledge online at http://www.youchoose.net/campaign/blood_

ties_fans_give_back_to_save_blood_ties or email SaveBT@gmail.com.For more information you can visit www.btfgb.wordpress.com.

Now THAT is smart, people. (The main character on BT, Vicki Nelson, wears glasses and suffers from a degenerative eye disease.) THAT is a wonderful campaign - tied into the show, progressive, and helpful to the larger community.

So kudos to the vampire fans!

On Other Blogs...

FROM REMOTE ACCESS:

As for Moonlight. Hmm. I can honestly say this show was a supreme disappointment. We’d DVR’d the first four episodes and I finally caught up with it this weekend.

I watched the first episode. Meh. But there was promise. And I’ve always liked vampire shows.

The second. Still an awful lot of exposition. I’m willing to give it a third shot.
The third. Halfway through, I still didn’t care about a single character, deleted the recording. Erased the fourth episode without watching and stopped the automatic weekly recording of the show.

It basically felt like to me a poor shadow of the pretty darn decent Blood Ties, which aired on Lifetime last spring. Blood Ties is far superior, with better acting and much better writing.

Wanna see a show about a vampire and private detective? Check Blood Ties out instead.

Word.

If you're in the USA, you can check out Blood Ties on Lifetime, 11pmET Fridays. This week's episode, 5:55, was written by Travis McDonald, the story coordinator who put up with mondo-shit from the two Den(n)ises earlier this year. And he never once went postal.

Because we failed. We simply didn't try...hard...enough. Jimmy the Bat could learn a thing or two from that Travis kid.

(picture from the Blood Ties wrap party. L to R: "Evil" Dennis Heaton, "Slightly Less Evil" Denis McGrath, Travis McDonald, and the great Kyle "Henry" Schmid.)

Lifetime talks about Blood Ties

JUST BEFORE my cold - so cold - CBC Newsworld interview this afternoon, I attended an "In Conversation With..." session with Susanne Daniels, the President of Lifetime Networks.

In a relaxed interview with Bill Carter from The New York Times, Daniels was refreshingly upfront, and pretty confident, about the challenge she's facing.

Daniels came to Lifetime from the WB, where, as an exec she managed to shepherd everything from Smallville to Buffy to Dawson's Creek. She worked with Kevin Williamson before Scream, J.J. Abrahms before he was a juggernaut, and Joss Whedon when his most reliable credit was one season on Roseanne.

So she knows talent.

She also knows talent close to home, since her husband, Greg Daniels, is the Exec Producer of The Office. Now that's one creative household.

She also said something that I've never heard a network exec say ever:

Don't always listen to the networks when they say what they want. You have to develop the thing you're passionate about. She admitted, in fact, that things change so quickly in the network game that you're better off going with your vision, and that networks often don't know what they want.

Wow. Would that there were 100 more network execs who thought just like her.

Daniels has no small task trying to bring Lifetime back. Her impression when she joined the network was that it seemed to be dated, and a little stuck in the past. She related stories about being on a plane and telling her seatmate what she did for a living and getting a funny look back as she said, "yeah, I used to watch your movies." "Give me a little while," Daniels said, "I'm going to try to get you back."

How that's going to translate into a new movie strategy? Daniels was a little unclear on that point. Seems like she's still working through it herself. But she was bullish on the upcoming slate of original dramas they're launching this summer, including Army Wives, which was (according to Daniels) Lifetime's most successful original program premiere in the channel's history. There are two more series going up this summer, which is a big slate for a cable channel. Daniels says, "that's the thing about cable. Look at USA with Monk. F/X and The Shield... You need one breakout series and you can build your whole channel around it."

So the three dramas this summer, as well as a couple of interesting sounding reality series (a Psychic Challenge?) is Daniels' way of rolling the dice to try and bring the viewers back.

But still, it's going to be a bear. Because as Carter pointed out, 55% of the TV viewing audience is female. That's not exactly a niche. How do you program for a niche that's that large and diverse? Especially when ABC is basically doing the same thing?

Now, Blood Ties fans, you've been very patient up til now, so here's what she said about Blood Ties. Late in the session she mentioned the acquisition of the show and used it as an example of how other considerations come into play. "The show did well for us - not spectacular, not a breakout...but it was one of the most downloaded shows consistently on Itunes."

In chitchat after the session, Daniels was even more enthusiastic about the show. Part of the reason for holding back those last ten episodes for October was that they are going to try a real push to build a whole night around Blood Ties. Daniels thinks that the show hasn't reached its full ratings potential, and they can get it there with better attention and positioning in the fall.

It's hard sometimes for fans to understand that the business realities do sometimes get in the way of the need for instant gratification...but to me, it sounds like a very smart and savvy programmer is thinking that she's got a great property that can do better with a little more help.

So loyal Blood Ties fans -- your efforts have paid off. The downloads are noticed, as is the enthusiasm out there. And yeah, waiting sucks, but sounds to me like you've got someone in the Executive Suite who's looking to try and do on her end, everything you're already doing on yours. This is a great thing.

But...

Before you ask....no -- she didn't say anything about that.

Lifetime's Blood Ties Behind the Scenes...

Lifetime has just gone live with a whole mess o' content for Blood Ties. They've done a great job on the website. Lots of nice goodies for fans and the curious alike to stoke their vampire-loving hearts and whet their bloody appetites.

If you live in the United States it looks like later this week you'll be able to download the first hour of the premiere from the Itunes Store -- for free. (They did that for Dresden Files too-- in fact, it's a growing promotional trend that probably deserves a column all its own soon. hmm.)

Right now if you go to Lifetime's site you can get all sorts of exclusive content including cast pictures and info and interesting behind-the-scenes featurettes with the stars of the show.

There's also a new blog, Blood Tales, by Tanya Huff, author of the original Blood Ties books & stories, where she says some very complimentary things about the show.

Here in B.C. We're all looking forward to what I guess is our world premiere here, this Sunday on Lifetime. I get to call my Dad in Florida and tell him that yes, there is a show I worked on on the TeeVee that he can see all the way down there in the Sunshine State.

As much as the site does a great job of stoking the fire for the premiere, as a latecomer to this train, I'm nonetheless impatient for everybody to see what we're doing now. Because I don't think it's revealing too much to say that the episodes we're currently working on (which are actually the end of the first season) are kicking everything into a way-high gear. The performances keep getting better. Our stories are filled with twisty goodness. The Directors are turning in wonderful stuff, and as much as you might like to view pics of Vicki, Mike, and Henry, I can't believe some of the great characters you haven't even met yet, whether it be Coreen or Kate, or Dave, or Dr. Mohadevan (whose name I seem to always spell wrong in my scripts, even though I was taught a perfectly good mnemonic device to remember it...Moe-had-a-van. Then again, today I misspelled Celluci, so I might just be getting punchy.)

And then there's this: today I met Danny Trejo. Well, I didn't meet him. I stood three feet away from him as Angelina the wonderful wardrobe woman showed his costume to showrunner Peter Mohan. But I was there, man. The guy's in Grindhouse. And I was right there. Me and the other Dennis squealed like eight year old girls.

Once he left the room, I mean.

And -- production process permitting, today we even figured out a way to get in a great in-joke that will resonate extra-specially for fans of the books. And it's going in my second Ep, ep 21.

I can't begin to tell you how great everyone is here. Everyone works so hard. This show doesn't have the highest budget in the world...but it has the best crew and creative people I've ever worked with. It's got performers who go the extra mile and writers who really try to get deep down into these stories to make 'em work...and it's got heart. Lots of it.

And teeth. The better to bite you with.

That metaphor? See this is probably why I write teleplays and not prose. Ah well.

As for you long suffering Canadian fans, yes I know it's filmed here. Yes, I know it seems unfair. But at least there's this ray of hope: the content on the website is not geo-locked -- so you can go and view it all you want.

The two-hour Blood Ties premiere plays on Lifetime this coming Sunday at 9pm ET. The show comes to Living in the UK later this summer and CHUM stations across Canada sometime this fall.

CHUM Orders Series; Our Hero Secretly Pleased

Today, Canada's CHUM Television (CityTv/Muchmusic/Space, etc.) ordered three new Canadian Drama Series. Excerpted from their press release:

TORONTO, March 16, 2006 – CHUM Television has ordered three new original dramas – The Murdoch Mysteries, a 13-episode spin off of the hugely-successful made-for-television movie franchise, Blood Ties, based on the popular Tanya Huff vampire novels and the mystery series Across the River to Motor City.

“CHUM has a long history of support for homegrown production and these series will see us continue and grow our commitment to Canadian drama that connects with our viewers,” said Roma Khanna, Senior Vice President, Content, CHUM Television. “We will be bringing our audiences three exciting new programs that are set in Canada and feature strong, dynamic, original storylines that combine universal appeal with a uniquely Canadian perspective.”

“We are very excited about these productions”, said Diane Boehme, Senior Director, Independent Production, CHUM Television. “Blood Ties will appeal to anyone with a thirst for romance and vampire lore while Across the River to Motor City offers engaging characters and a unique perspective that has not previously been explored on television. The Murdoch Mysteries were so well received as MOWs, that we felt obligated to satisfy our audiences’ very clear desire for more.”

The Murdoch Mysteries, from Shaftesbury Films, builds on the success of the highly-rated Detective Murdoch Mysteries made-for-television movies adapted from Maureen Jennings’ best-selling mystery novels. The series, set in 1895 Toronto, combines compelling Victorian tales of murder with the fast-paced, visually-intriguing styles of today’s leading crime series. Casting and pre-production for the series is expected to begin this summer. (13 x 60’)

Blood Ties is based on Tanya Huff’s internationally popular “Blood” novels. When her latest love interest turns out to be a 450-year-old vampire and the caseload of her fledgling P.I. agency shifts from fraud artists and cheating spouses to battles with ghosts, ghouls, zombies and demons, ex-police detective Vicki Nelson realizes that her life will never be the same. The series will be produced by Kaleidoscope Entertainment and goes into production later this summer. (22 X 60’)

Across the River to Motor City is a mystery series spanning two eras, two countries and two unforgettable characters. As an insurance investigator in 1960s Windsor and Detroit, Ben Ford weathered the storms of those tumultuous years. Four decades later, a long-buried tragedy leads his daughter Kathleen to unravel the secrets and lies at the heart of her troubled relationship with her father – secrets Ben will risk everything to keep. The series is being produced by Jonsworth Productions in association with Devine Entertainment and will begin shooting in the fall. (6 x 60’)

With this announcement, genre fans get something new in Blood Ties. I've read a couple of early scripts for this show, and they're good fun. I don't know about the Murdoch Mysteries, but it sounds intriguing.

Canadian TV is changing, and with the CRTC's increased demand on drawing ratings, a lot of hard choices are going to need to start being made about ongoing programs. CHUM reflects this in the release, too, with the revelation that their current series Godiva's and The Collector are not being renewed.

And now we come to the part of the story where I reveal how I've buried the lead:

I'm the co-creator of Across the River To Motor City, with a man named Bob Wertheimer, who was also the co-creator and Executive Producer (and my boss!) of the show I wrote in South Africa, in 2004, Charlie Jade.

Looks like I have a busy summer ahead. I'm going to have to rethink what and how much I'll be able to write about the process here on this blog. As we've talked about before, the writing room is a place of trust, and production is a fragile and stressful experience. I have partners now. And making television, well, it's a bit like making law and sausages...you don't really want to see the process up close -- even if you think you do.

For a guy with a big mouth, I've always prided myself on being fairly circumspect and professional in my dealings in this business. I like being enthusiastic, and I like working with people, and being able to trust people. And I like it when they trust me. And that's going to be even more important now.

But...don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled.

This is a big step forward for me. Huge, actually, as I've only been a hired gun up to now. I'm sure I'll be able to talk about the process obliquely here and there. But if occasionally you don''t see my normal fist to the groin level of candor about my day-to-day projects, I hope you'll understand.

This blog has always been a procrastination enabler and focuser and a work in progress -- and I hope both those things can continue. Hell, if the Scary Movie guy can keep writing, I should be able to handle blogging and a six pack!

Though... I'm not sure I'll be doing a lot of procrastinating over the next few months. Eep.

Anyway. Yay!

Blood Ties Interview with Peter Mohan!

While I toil trying to pump out that elusive first draft of the next-to-last episode in Blood Ties' first season, showrunner and show creator Peter Mohan talks about discovering the Tanya Huff novels, and the core of what makes Blood Ties so special.

This is the first part of a two part Geek Love interview from GeekMonthly.com!


An excerpt:

GEEKMONTHLY.COM: How did you get involved with the project in the first place?

PETER MOHAN: I’ve got kind of a long history with it, because I’d read the novels years ago. I saw them prominently displayed at a bookstore because they’d just been published. They talked about this female P.I. working the streets of Toronto with her partner who’s a vampire. I thought, “Okay, I’m in.” I read them, liked them and thought it would be a great thing to turn into a show, but didn’t have the time or the wherewithal to do it. Suddenly these guys called me about three years ago and said, “We’ve got a show about a female P.I. who works with a vampire,” and I said, “Oh my God, you’ve got the Vicki Nelson novels. I’ve got to be involved.” We went on from there.

Read the rest here.

Also, apparently there's a couple of blurbs in the next issue of the U.S. TVGuide, including a nice mention in the magazine's HOT LIST: 21 shows you've gotta see.

Blood Ties 2 hour premiere airs on Lifetime in the USA on Sunday, March 11, 9PM ET.

Emily Post's Guide to Save-Our-Show Campaigns

FANS, COME in closer. Closer. Yes. That's good. Okay, I know sometimes you and I have disagreed on stuff like, oh, fanfic. But you know I love you. Hell, I am you. I remember explaining my X-Wing Fighter to my Ga and God love her if she didn't just sit there and nod when I babbled excitedly explaining who Darth Vader was. I traced and re-traced and collected every bit of Peanuts memorabilia I could. I went to three Star Trek conventions willingly. I built the Battlestar Galactica model. In a dark period in my past, I was even obsessed by Mickey Mouse. (I lived in Orlando. What do you want from me?)

As I cruised into adulthood, before I joined the dark side and started creating entertainment, I flipped for Twin Peaks. I thought long into the night about episodes of thirtysomething and The Wonder Years. I taped every episode of the first three seasons of Murphy Brown. I'm not even counting M*A*S*H, or my current crazy-love-object, the Ron Moore era Battlestar Galactica, Yes, brothers and sisters, testify -- I know what it's like.

And oh, shall we speak of it? Shall we speak of the dark times? Of the poor shows, beloved, that never made it? That sank beneath the waves and caused me depression? Yea, verily, Almost Grown and Eyes, I'm looking your way. My So Called Life and My Life and Times, I mourn you still. Sons & Daughters, Dead Like Me, Wonderfalls, Andy Richter Controls The Universe, Love Monkey -- no...no...the wounds are still too fresh.

I know how it feels.

But now I'm wearing a different hat. I write for shows. So that fan enthusiasm -- so much easier to foment and direct in this easy internet age -- might just come to bear and help save a project I loved and worked on.

Or it might help kill it.

Let me explain.

I'm going to take off my writer hat right now and put on another, earlier chapeau. This one's worn, and it doesn't fit as well. There's a couple of holes in it. But it should still serve. Ah. There it is. Sharp.

Once upon a time, dear reader -- after I was a fan, but before I was a self-interested writer...I was a network person.

Please. No hissing.

In 1997 I helped start up Canada's Sci-Fi Channel, SPACE: The Imagination Station. In those early days, our offices were kind of all crammed together -- as were our job functions. The publicist spent a whole lot of time answering the mail. And because we were practically on top of each other in a small office, we kind of all got to see it. And it was instructive.

Letters written in meticulous longhand by genteel grandmothers; crazy precise lettering of obsessives; semi-literate screeds that ended in the middle of a sentence -- we got it all.

In my years working inside the TV station I got a chance to see all the different kinds of mail that came through the door: job applications, complaints, contest entries, resumes, requests, and fan letters. Lots and lots of fan letters.

More importantly, I saw where they went. I saw who they went to, who was tasked with dealing with them, and how they reacted. It's not necessarily who or how you think.

Recently, fan campaigns are back in the news. Part of this is cyclical, of course, as the upfronts means not just a flurry of new shows, but the killing of a bunch of once-upon-a-time hopefuls.

Fan campaigns are usually futile -- too little too late, too small a fan base, a hundred other reasons...but they continue to flourish because every once in a while, they work. Or seem to work.

Jericho is the latest example. Yes, CBS reversed its decision to cancel and bring the show back for 8 new episodes. Depending on whom you talk to, fans either had a lot to do with that, or not very much to do with it at all. Me, I think it's in the middle. I think that Jericho fans organized very early and did good work writing letters, and I think that CBS, who wasn't that sure about canceling the show to begin with, found out that advertisers weren't too excited by their new shows and reversed on Jericho to buy themselves time.

But that victory, no matter whose it is, puts fire into the heart of any fan who thinks that maybe the show they love is going out before its time. But all fan campaigns are not created equal. And there are ways you can go seriously wrong and actually wind up hurting the show you love.

So I wanted to talk about Save-our-shows. I'm going to make a lot of reference to Blood Ties here, because that's the show I just finished on, a show I'd love to have the opportunity to write for again, and a show that's right in the midst of a mobilized campaign by its fan base.

So, take this as you will. But as a writer/insider, once and future fan, and former network person (though not a suit; never a suit) I present to you

Emily Post's Guide to Save-Our-Show Campaigns*

*not actually affiliated with Emily Post

1) Don't Send Crap.

It seems like a good idea, and kind of hooky -- find something that's associated with the show and send it on in in droves to "show your support." Jericho fans sent nuts, and yup, every news story about the show mentioned the damn nuts. But the nuts are beside the point. It's a bauble.

The problem is that now everybody wants to send some tchochke. And man, that's a big mistake.

So, Blood Ties fans, please, don't send pints of blood or fake fangs or anything. What you say in a letter is way more important and powerful than any hunk of junk you push through the postal system.

I have less of an opinion on other "organizing cries" like raising money for a charity or an ad or something -- though really, my humanist side says that it's always better to give to charity than try to buy an ad in Variety -- but when it comes to the crap through the mail stuff, I'm firm. It's a bad idea.

Because I've seen who it goes to.

The people who have the power to greenlight or un-cancel a show are never the people that have to deal with the cases of nuts or steel rods or Mars bars or fake vomit or whatever else gets sent by the skidload. It never gets anywhere near them. Instead, the likely outcome is that you're going to make some personal assistant or mailroom person's day absolute hell. For weeks. They get paid crap, and now they have to deal with your crap. It's not fair. They can't do anything about the show. And they're the ones who suffer.

But there's also an extra-special reason not to send crap. See, those powerless people? Even though they're powerless, they have something you don't. In whatever, small way -- they have access. The personal assistant to Susanne Daniels, President of Lifetime Networks, talks to her all day, every day. The mail gets delivered in the company each and every day.

Now when I worked at a network, occasionally, very impulsively -- someone very big would ask the "little people" what they thought of something. You know, to be populist.

What do you think they're going to say if they've spent weeks dealing with your crap?

That's right. It's only natural. It's only human. They are going to HATE YOUR SHOW. And they are going to be GLAD IT WAS CANCELED. They will not defend the show, because you have MADE THEIR LIVES HELL.

I have seen this happen with my own eyes. It's even happened to me.

When SPACE went on the air, we bought Doctor Who. We polled the online fans on our website asking where we should start the series. Like, 90% said, "Play it from the beginning." So we did.

And the show's ratings were abysmal. I'm not talking bad. I'm talking, test-pattern bad. It was a colossal mistake. The kind you make when you're new and just starting out.

So because we'd taken such a bath in the ratings, the decision was made not to buy more.

And the letters came by the bushel. Now. Keep in mind that this was for our lowest-rated show by a wide, wide margin. If the people who wrote the letters had all watched the show, and gotten their friends to do the same, maybe it would have been a different story. But they didn't. But the failure, you see, the anger -- well, that was on us. Except...not. Because the person who had the power to buy more or not was insulated from the mail by secretaries and all the little people.

Now, thank God, no one sent TARDIS's or scarves or anything -- but the mail in and of itself was...offputting. Extremely offputting. It was angry, and arrogant, and full of "you stupid this's" and "you screwed up that..." and it was just really hateful, and unpleasant. I'm serious. From that day to this, I've never seen more unpleasant fan mail.

So we decided we hated Doctor Who.

It took me years -- til the new series, as a matter of fact, to get the bad taste left by the Who fans out of my mouth.

That, ladies and gents, is a backfire.

Which brings me to

2) Learn how to Translate your FanLang.

FanLang is fan language. It can be the in-jokes from the show, jargon, whatever. Or it can be phrases like "squee" or other stuff that comes from the world of the show. A passionate fan letter is great. It's fun. But it's not going to be the most effective way to influence a decision to continue or cancel a show.

There's something you have to accept and account for right off the top: the people you're writing to approach the series in a completely different way than you do. To them, it's product. It's a commodity. It's a delivery device for eyeballs. Your eyeballs. And if the show's in danger of being canceled, the problem is that they feel that your eyeballs aren't enough. They need more.

Don't get upset or shirty about this. After all, TV is still a monumentally good deal for you. The compact is that you get to watch this piece of entertainment that costs upward of a million dollars, and all you have to do is let someone try to sell you soap every ten minutes. That's a sweet deal, even if that model is breaking down.

Because they view the show as a commodity, emotional appeals or ultimatums are not going to work. Not unless they're framed in language that a network person is going to respond to.

Remember the episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation, where Picard was preparing for that diplomatic misson where he had to say the greeting exactly right or there'd be big heap trouble? It's like that. As you sit down to write the letter of support, keep that in mind. Remember -- you're trying to speak to them in language they'll find useful.

But here's the trick: that doesn't mean complaining about ratings or talking about demographics or whatever other empirical measurement you stumble upon. One of the most tiresome aspects of the online debate between the crazy Old Battlestar Galactica fans and the crazy New Battlestar Galactica fans is when the fans of the old show starting using "ratings data" to prove their point that the new show was an utter failure that no one ever watched.

The interpretations and analyses were crazy-making and offputting because they quoted figures out of context, and missed the barn of common sense.

Any network or channel will have reams of empirical data on the show. They do not need you to provide empirical data. And they will not take kindly to you trying to frame empirical data. It's not your strength, so don't go there. You are trying to be the human face behind the empirical data.

3) Attach the Show To The Channel's Core Values

Believe it or not, every channel has a vision of themselves. Who is their "typical viewer?" Who are the viewers they want. The cynical thing is to say, "young," these days. But that's not always the case. Beyond the viewers, there are certain types of people, certain modes, if you will, that the channel finds attractive. Remember -- it's all about positioning themselves to their advertisers. They want to be able to say that their viewers are like this, or like that...so before you write your letter, you may want to do searches or research a little bit on how the network tries to present themselves. What did they promise to advertisers at the last upfronts? Has the network programmer/president ever given an interview in Variety or the Hollywood Reporter?

When you write your letter, you want to attach yourself to these core values. Using the Blood Ties example, rather than say, "I think Henry is hot," or whatever, a positive thing to say would be, "The thing about Blood Ties that I like is that Vicki is the strong, central lead. She's not the sidekick -- she's the one driving the action. She's not in the traditionally female role. It's nice to see that, and to see the men following her lead for a change. I think that's very empowering for female viewers."

See, Lifetime is television for women. If you did a little reading about their planning, you'd quickly find that they're trying to get away from their staple: women done bad/in peril movies.

What's also good? Mentioning that the show moved you enough to recruit other people to watch it. Tell any sort of anecdote that fixes you in the mind of the reader as more than a stat. "I love this show because it's the one thing my daughter and I watch together..." "It sounds silly, but the way I get through my workout is by telling myself that I get to watch show X after."

You are their viewer. They have a picture of you. Do you fit their picture? Show them that you do. Demonstrate that this show affects you, and makes you feel warmly toward the channel. Convince them that though the numbers may not be over the top, you are exactly the kind of viewer they want, and they should think twice about losing the show. Be funny. Be thoughtful. Show how this show enriches your life, and how it enriches their channel.

4) Don't Threaten; Show A Willingness to Work With the Network

It's the easiest threat to make in the world: "If you cancel this show, I'll never watch your channel again." It's also empty. They know it's empty. All they need is one show that you like, and they know they'll get you back. Don't even try to deny it.

Making an empty threat is worse than keeping your letter positive.

Don't point to, or blame, other shows on the channel.

Again, I'm going to go to a Blood Ties example here. A lot of Blood Ties fans are looking at the fact that Army Wives took BT's spot, and did great ratings, as somehow a slight of the show. So you've got people saying, "I hate that show, I'll never watch it, etc etc."

Well, that's just silly. Because they're trying to get people to become habit viewers. So if they think you're someone who is only there for one show and if that show goes, so do you, well, then they're not losing very much because apparently the show didn't draw huge numbers of people like you and you say you're going to leave anyway.

Far MORE effective would be to demonstrate that Blood Ties made you decide to TRY Army Wives. Show knowledge of the other shows on the schedule. Sample them. Tell them you've sampled them. Explain to them what you liked and what you didn't, and return to your point: what you feel Blood Ties has that those other shows lack.

And keep their perspective in mind, too: in the case of Army Wives, it's Lifetime's most successful series premiere ever, and it's held its numbers. So yeah, they're going to be over the moon about it. If you come out and say that you hate, hate, hate their big popular successful show -- well, does that sound like you're in touch with their viewership, or out of step with it?

(Substitute CBS and their slate, or F/X and their slate here.)

By showing that you're willing to sample their other fare, and are aware of what they're doing, you're proving that you're an engaged viewer. They want people like you. A lot.

No matter how popular CSI is there are people (like me) who just hate it. Do you think CBS is going to give up on getting people like me to watch their network? Hell no.

So if you write and say, "Congratulations on Army Wives. I watched it, I liked this and this, but it's not really my cup of tea. I prefer shows that have X and Y, and that's why I like Blood Ties, etc, etc," then, my friend, you're making a case.

In the case of Blood Ties, again, this fall they're looking at running 10 episodes back-to-back twice a week in October. They're also going to package it on a night with a show about Psychics. (it actually sounds fun: a "psychic challenge" - why didn't I think of that?) That means they're trying to "build a night."

Sample the shows before and after. Put that in your letter, too. Show appreciation for the show by saying you tuned in the lead in and the lead out. That's speaking their language.

5) Don't Stop With the Network

One of the most effective groups in the United States when it comes to TV is an odious little outfit called the Parents Television Council. The PTC is famous for pouncing on any show that it thinks runs counter to its conservative Christian agenda.

It organizes people to write sponsors every which way to Sunday. And it makes sponsors nervous. It doesn't matter that they're not in the majority. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.

If you note the kinds of people who advertise on the show you like, and were to write three letters to their company or their Ad Agency, that could make for a huge impact.

Again, it would help if you could explain why you like the show, what about it appeals to you (in a social standing, not plot -- remember, they may not have seen the show.) The idea "strong female characters," or "enjoyable action," or "witty interplay," or "interesting allegories for world events," or whatever it might be... what you're trying to say is that it's a good thing that they're associated with that show...being associated with that show makes you feel warmer toward the company. If you can describe their commercial, and show that you actually watched it, and absorbed its message, that's better. Heck, if you suggest that you like this project so much that you went out and tried their product for the first time to show your support for the show -- hell, that's even better!

6) Get Beyond The Internet

This is the hardest thing for fan communities to grok. No matter how big your numbers are online, you are still not fully representative of the audience.

A successful TV show pulls in tens of millions of viewers. And 90% of them, even still, are not chatting online about it. They're not going to Television Without Pity, they're not haunting newsgroups or fan sites, and they are not on Aint It Cool News.

Remember the fuss over the "online wave" in politics last year? The Net Roots? Well, they got Joe Lieberman to lose the Democratic nomination, but they didn't succeed in defeating him in the general.

Online fans tend to vastly overestimate their impact. When you're organizing an online campaign, especially if it's through a show's website, you're already preaching to the converted. You need to take the message out. That might mean everybody getting three people outside - who they don't know from online, to watch the show and see if they'll write a letter.

In the old days, when organizing was much harder, this stuff was taken for granted. But just as I was amazed when I saw university students in my class not willing to research beyond "googling," so am I surprised by fans who think that as long as they get the people who are chatting about the show online rallied, they're done. They're not. That's your base. You gotta expand your base. And the only way to do that is at the Water Cooler, at the Gym, in the line at Starbucks, at the bookstore, at the movies, at daycare, etc, etc, etc.

7) Remember that Everyone Is Unsure, and Exploit that...BUT... Know When You're Being Unrealistic.

This is a weird, transitional time for the TV industry. Broadcast models are breaking down. They're still figuring out how to factor in Timeshifting and PVR viewing (which I'm convinced helps genre shows more, since people are more likely to record those kinds of shows to watch and rewatch later), there's also the question of DVD sets and paid downloads...in short, that uncertainty means that there's a chance for a lot more second guessing -- provided that there is a baseline level of support.

I mean, nothing was going to save The Black Donnellys. And Studio 60 was toast too, by the end. And Veronica Mars had 3 seasons. At a certain point, they do have to go with the business analysis. And that's when you're going to hate them. They know that.

And sometimes...well...admit it. X-Files went on three seasons too long, right? I'm bummed Firefly never caught on, but not as bummed as I'd be if I'd never gotten to see it at all. The fact that there are only 12 episodes of Fawlty Towers and one season of Freaks and Geeks doesn't make me love those shows any less.

If there is the slightest bit of wiggle room for that "on the bubble" show...following the steps I've outlined above will help you make more of an impact in your letter.

Finally, one more: please, please, please appear rational, and make your arguments dispassionately. You don't have to leech all emotion out -- certainly not -- but the argument you're making for saving the show cannot be primarily an emotional one.

I remember somebody getting mad at me once because I said that "Dead Like Me" was gone, gone, gone -- because people had been cast in other shows. Well, this person didn't want to hear that. At all. I was telling her something she didn't want to hear, and as far as she was concerned, I was attacking her. She wanted to grasp at straws.

At a certain point, you gotta stop grasping at straws.

Read this article and read the comments. They're hilarious. Really.

Don't be like that, okay?

Good luck saving that show. Whatever it is. I mean it.

To read about how to send a letter of support for Blood Ties to Lifetime, click here.

EDIT: 11/13 - I guess it's because of the WGA strike, but this article has been getting a ton of link-love lately. And, of course, front and centre is every Jericho fan who wants to quibble and argue and thinks I'm running them down for their campaign. And I'm not. You were very lucky to have the right campaign at the right time.

But...

Besides being a writer, and working at a network, I've also been a journalist. And journalism is all about the 'new hook.' Sending crap now -- not a new hook. The Jericho case worked. End of story. The next time something gets sent, not a great hook. The best you can hope for is that you were the SECOND group to orchestrate a campaign around sending stuff...

Come up with something better. Be clever. Don't copycat.

And really, really, really -- don't send crap. Jericho is the exception that proves the rule. I promise you.

EDIT: Jan 2009 -- What do you know. They actually got that Dead Like Me movie made. Um. Exception that proves the rule?

No?

Fine.

You still shouldn't send crap.

Blood Ties: The Devil on Lifetime

A LITTLE OVER a year ago now, I was sitting comfortably in my little condo, taking a last pass on one of my freelance Rent-A-Goalie scripts. In the back of my head I wondered what I was going to do next. I'd finished my work for Across The River To Motor City and the series had wrapped shooting. I wasn't going to be involved in the post. I had expectations of trying to develop through the winter and try to take things from there.

Then I took a call from Peter Mohan. Peter had been one of the Exec Producer/Showrunner mentors when I went to the Canadian Film Centre. We'd seen each other around and about for several years at various events. We'd talked about working together maybe a couple of years earlier, when Peter was trying to get a series off the ground based on the Vicki Nelson vampire books.

I knew the books, had even read a couple when I was a producer at the Canadian Space Channel. Tanya Huff wrote vampire books set in my Toronto. And the novelty value of that was enough to make me dip into them. And they were a lot of fun. I'd read a few of Peter's development scripts and got excited. This could be a really fun show to work on. But the funding didn't come through, and the project wobbled and went away. Which bummed me out a little.

Cut to a year or so later, when the late CHUM announced its production slate. ATR got six eps, and lo and behold, Blood Ties was back with 22. But this time, the aggressively Toronto-set series was going to be shot in Vancouver. WTF?

Canadian TV, man. The product is sometimes wobbly, sometimes sublime -- but the story of how it gets made is always a tale or two.

The timing and my comittment to ATR took me out of the running for consideration on Blood Ties, which bummed me out slightly.

So that late November (may have been early December) call from Peter Mohan was fortuitous indeed. One of the BT writers -- a friend of mine -- had decided to leave the show at the Christmas hiatus to come back to Toronto. Would I be interested in replacing her?

Well, hell yeah!

So it was that in the weeks leading up to Christmas, I immersed myself in early cuts of the show, and a few scripts here and there. I met with Peter when he was back in Toronto, and he got me working on my first outline. When I went back, we'd be shooting episode 13. There were outlines for 14 and 15, and a vague idea for 16. The episode I was assigned was Episode 17. And it was a doozy.

Without spoiling too much, I got handed the opportunity to introduce a major character from Henry Fitzroy's past. It was a kid in a candy store moment, and also a big gulp -- because I knew this would be one that was pored over and pored over by fans because of its significance.

It also allowed me to play with one of the vampire tropes that Tanya had added to the lexicon that I found most interesting: the concept of vampire territoriality. And I also wanted to introduce a little interesting contrast into the mix. The vampire on Blood Ties isn't broody; Henry's comfortable with what he is. A great departure from the dominant Anne Rice view of the genre. Anyway, I thought some sort of nod to that more delicate and dominant interpretation would be fun to tweak.

In those heady days over Christmas, as I was getting to know the characters a bit more, I dove further into Tanya's original work -- re-reading the first book and blasting my way through all the others. I found myself really liking the Short Stories in particular. Because we'd optioned the books and the plots in the books (except the character of Tony) we could use details from them as we saw fit. When I got stuck on my outline, I found a neat plot twist courtesy of one of the Tanya stories. So big shout out to Tanya Huff - thanks again.

My outline changed a lot before we went to draft, and the draft changed a lot from First to Second and then Production. The amazing thing about a good Showrunner like Peter Mohan is that it's fairly easy to see where he's going in terms of notes. He's clear about what he wants, and the tone adjustments to some key scenes really made my script a whole lot better. (I don't want to say what those adjustments are, because that's really spoiler-y. Suffice to say that I think Peter was right. The episode's way better because of the direction he took it in.)

The usual production things changed the script too. Having to write for the venue changed some scenes. But we wound up with a great guest cast, and a really satisfying shoot. And most of my words survived, and the moments that were my favorite are there in the cut -- so, yay!

The last part of the puzzle came into place for me when I met and started working with Andy Mikita, the Director. Mikita's a veteran of Stargate. He's a great actor's director and really wonderfully collaborative. He'd come to my office and be excited about how he wanted to stage a scene and he'd get me excited about it too -- the enthusiasm was way infectious. Andy's staging suggested triggered some rewrites that made the scenes even better. I remember thinking during the shoot for this show, "wow. this is the way the whole thing's supposed to work, and feel!"

Finally, I simply can't say enough good about Kyle Schmid, the young actor who plays Henry. Ep. 17 is a big Henry show. I sat in Peter's office and worked through concerns he had about one scene, and saw the intensity in his face, the concentration. It's an amazing thing when you see an actor work through, get a scene, and realize and decide how they can play it. When they're at their best, and they ask for a few tweaks to this, or to that -- a lot of writers roll their eyes, and sometimes the objections are indeed rollworthy. But somtimes, a couple of small changes, and you can suddenly see the scene lock into place -- right there on their face. And that moment is awesome, and makes me realize why I love actors. (Within reason, I mean.) In its own way, this was a different show for Christina, too. And her concerns led me to a last minute, extra-special plot twist, that's actually a callback too. Christina plussed the show! How great is that?

Everything about my Blood Ties experience was like this. I learned from a fantastic showrunner. I had a mountain of laughs. I got to discover Vancouver, rain and all, and even start to nurse a certain fondness for the place (though there's a couple of people I'd appreciate you not telling about that.)

My time there changed my life -- socially and professionally. I made new friends. I had good times. I broadened my horizons, made an incredible connection and I laughed more than I ever have when I was working. Ever. It was a happy time. I think that shows through the work.

Thanks to Peter, and Tanya, and Eriksen and Heaton and McDonald and the wonderful crew and everybody else that made my time there possible.

So, Lifetime fans, I hope you enjoy The Devil You Know.

I'm very proud of it. It's a whole lot of fun.

The Question and The Answer

I HEARD THIS week from a few fans of the show I worked on in Vancouver last year, BLOOD TIES, that they'd heard from Lifetime, the U.S. Broadcaster, that the show was not going to be picked up for a second season; that the reasoning was that it had not performed up to ratings expectations.

Which kind of closes an open secret door. It's been pretty clear that Lifetime wasn't going to pick up the show for the longest time now. Since I was just a hired hand, and it wasn't my show, I kept mum whenever anybody asked me about it because that's what you do.

But now that it's official, and coincidentally, because I got more than four emails this week asking essentially the same question in essentially the same way, now I'm gonna answer it.

The question I've been asked this week is: Do you think that BLOOD TIES is going to come back, that someone else will pick it up and more episodes will be made?

The answer is No. No I don't.

Because there's more than one Vampire show that's been shit-canned recently, I should also answer the email that I've gotten from a couple of Moonlight fans: Do you think that Moonlight has a chance to wind up somewhere else?

No. No I don't.

I put those two things together because I'm now leading into the larger point: I'm not the guy who owns either property, and the dude who's doing the negotiations, so I can't really say for sure. I don't know for sure. I'm not involved. Take that with any grain of salt that you want. (And I'll get back to this, too. Remember the salt.)

I would say that Moonlight probably had a better chance because it had been on CBS, but since they passed, and since the sets have been struck, and since the Jericho thing worked out so well, I'm gonna say full page ads or no full page ads, that show's probably toast. And if the network version's done, then the cable version's definitely done. (Again, all this is my-- you know what? Can we just take as read for the rest of this post that at the end of every paragraph, I'm silently mouthing that warning that appears on every DVD now about the opinions not necessarily reflecting the opinions of anybody other than the people making the statement, and not the corporation that owns the show? Can we just take that as read? Good, cause qualifying this shit is exhausting. )

I think it's a shame that Moonlight and Blood Ties are both toast. Because I think vampire stories are fun and I love'em and I think there should always be some sort of Vamp show on the air. (Although, seriously dudes, that whole can go out in the day thing is MONUMENTALLY fucking cheating. NOT cool. It makes the tragic scary vamps seem like my redheaded friends. And trust me, none of them are particularly scary. Okay. Maybe K-Mac. But still.)

Blood Ties is tragic for me because it was fun to work on, and I think it was a fun show, and a different take on the whole thing because no matter what the fangirl squee, the vamp was actually the sidekick. I think that was the genius part of the world that Tanya Huff created in her books and that Peter Mohan brought to TV. The central figure was the girl. That's a different spin.

There's a couple of other perplexing things about BT going down, and some bad timing things. The show was not helped by the fact that by the time we'd shot the only season (and it was not two seasons, that was just marketing) the originating Canadian Broadcaster who had started it rolling, CHUM, essentially ceased to exist when it was split in twain and sold off to two companies. The show kind of got lost in two differing agendas.

But -- and this is something that we all point out every time we who worked on it get together -- the show did good numbers in Canada -- better than the lead in and the lead out. Better than what was in the timeslot before it premiered, and better than what they put in there afterward. And it sold everywhere -- well. I'm told that the international sales guys were clamoring for a second season.

But that just goes to show you how hard it is to finance a TV show if you don't have one of those big six media corporations behind you. That's just how it is, I guess. I think they may even still be trying. And if they did somehow bring it back, I'd whoop de doo with everyone. Believe me.

Okay, I'm halfway through this thing now and I'm starting to lose my nerve, because I'm starting to get the spidey-sense pounding in my head that tells me that the batshit crazy fans are going to bombard me with all the weird hate-on messages. And the BT crew is fine, but Moonlight was a network show and ... some of you 'Murricans are a little crazy... but I'm almost to the salt. Be patient.

I think there's also a weird bias against genre stuff at channels these days. Scratch that. I know there is. It doesn't get respect. And neither does its fans. And that sucks. It does. I think the problem is so many of these shows reach the diehard geeks and people who like this kind of stuff, but it doesn't widen out. And that bigger audience is what they really want. And they're convinced that genre shows are too narrow. Nevermind that they're also the ones that have the ability to branch out and touch everyone if they truly hit. See Heroes, X-Files, Star Trek -- should I go on?

But when it doesn't hit that magic branch out, the genre fans feel burned. And they think that they shouldn't watch shows because they're just going to get canceled. And they don't realize that hey, that's true of like 7 out of 10 non-vampire or werewolf or space opera shows, too. Most shows fail. That's the reality.

I feel the need to validate all that fan love and support because, well, it starts early and it's just so passionate. I mean, there were BT fan sites up weeks before the show premiered. I'm sure there are Dollhouse sites popping up even now. That's awesome.

So to not acknowledge both the depth of feeling and the unlikeliness of success at this point, in all the "save the show" campaigns, just seems to me to be cruel. And the fans deserve better than that. Blood Ties fans, and Moonlight fans too. A lot of people will keep silent because they just don't want the grief of the crazier side of fandom. That side is indeed fearsome. But that's not enough of a reason to keep everybody hanging forever. So the only thing to do is to try and do the impossible and explain it a bit.

Now. Here's the salt part.

Part of the problem of the fan campaign, as I've said before, is that the internet makes it seem like there's so many of you that it makes it even harder to imagine how a show could be not popular enough to go on. What do you mean it's not popular! Look at all of us here!

It's at these times that I say, "I want you to imagine rolling coins." You know how there are 50 pennies in a roll? Well, you know how big a roll of pennies is, right? How much space it takes up? Got it? Good. Now, how easy would it be to store 100 rolls of pennies? That's 5000 pennies. That's gonna take up space, right? Probably a whole drawer. Okay, now say we're talking, oh, I don't know, 5 million viewers. That's a level of viewership that gets you totally canceled. How many rolls is that? Well, it's um...5000 is 100..uh...Holy cow.....can that be right? 100 000 rolls of pennies?

You're going to need more drawers. And a reinforced floor.

Do you honestly have that many posters, fans, on forums, posting regularly? I've never seen the forum where a thousand people post regularly. Ever? Maybe. Regularly? Nope. At that level it would become noise. That's an unmanageable number.

Oh, By the way. What they really want is American Idol numbers. And that's like, 25 million. 30 million. 4, 5, 6 times that. I can't even do that math. Because I'm a dumb bad-at-math writer.

Point is, it's not your fault. The shift to a focus on "save our show" campaigns sets up a dynamic where it's just easier to feel like you failed. It's not a failure if there was never a real hope of success to begin with. You can't help it if the show didn't catch on, and if what seems like a ridiculous number of fans to you STILL ISN'T ENOUGH.

Now....here's where the salt comes in. Because some of the people out there are licking it right now. How dare I? I mean, really, How FUCKING DARE I say that they won't succeed! How dare I say JPOD's not coming back! Or that the NUTS THING WITH JERICHO DIDN"T TOTALLY WERK WHO DO YOU THNK U R, ANYWAYS?????

I'm gonna get a lot of those emails. I know it. I'll take it. It's fine. Bring it on, baby. My back is strong.

I just feel bad to see people building up false hopes. And not moving on and remembering the thing you loved for what it was.

In the case of BT fans, and I've said this before -- you can at least go back to Tanya Huff's original books to see where the story goes. (It's pretty great.) And if you're feeling burned because you're a Moonlight fan and you were thinking, somebody's gotta pick up the show, right? And now here's this asshole in CANADA saying, "probably not going to happen. And oh yeah, DO NOT SEND BLOOD PRODUCTS TO CBS!" and maybe you're bummed.

Cheer up. Don't be bummed. TV and movies are cyclical and weird. You never know what happens down the road.

Judd Apatow was a guy who failed with two TV series -- Freaks & Geeks and Undeclared. F&G broke my heart when it was canceled. Now he's the biggest Director in Hollywood. Seth Rogen, who starred and wrote for Undeclared, is a freaking sex symbol, for heaven's sake. I loved those shows, but hey, maybe he was meant to make movies like 40 Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up instead.

David Schwimmer was on some failed show the season before Friends. If that had gotten picked up, No Ross. Lisa Kudrow was originally cast in Frasier. She was fired and replaced by Peri Gilpin, and if that didn't happen, no Phoebe. I don't even want to think about what would have happened if Jennifer Aniston had kept her original nose.

A show that I loved that failed big in the 80's was this one season wonder called Almost Grown. It was this trippy show tracking a family in three time periods. Starred Eve Gordon and Tim Daly. The guy who wrote it was named David Chase. He'd go on to create The Sopranos.

My So Called Life -- a beloved show, canceled after 19 eps. Claire Danes is a star and Winnie Holzman went on to write the Broadway smash musical WICKED.

The point is, you just never know.

The people who made Blood Ties and Moonlight sure loved bringing them to you. And you never know, who knows what comes next. Maybe this is all for the best. Or maybe it's random.

Anyway, my point is, the people who make these shows are always humbled by the depths and the lengths fans will go to support them and not lose faith and not lose hope. And we'd hate to see failure and silence make you turn away from that. And sometimes, when you know it's not going to work, even if you know you're going to get crazy mail, you just gotta man up and say that. 99% chance it's not going to work, so you might want to think about the time you put into it. Just saying.

But if you say that, you also do the fucking disclaimer. Here it comes again: Yup, I'm not privy to everything. You want to grasp at straws, grasp away. GRASP AWAY!

But to the rest of you: don't stop loving what you love, and don't ever apologize for the shows you love. And know that people who make the stuff really, really do appreciate you. And don't write angry letters to Lifetime. They're a business and they made their decision for a reason. And don't bombard CBS with fake fangs. TV is expensive. You know how many pennies you have to roll to pay for it? A LOT.

Focus on the thing you loved, and let go. Cause I guarantee there's something else coming just around the corner. And the people who met and forged relationships on that show you loved? You never know what they're gonna cook up next.

Thanks for watching. Don't be discouraged. You're awesome. And one of these days another show you love will break through and be a hit, and then a couple seasons will pass, and you'll get to complain about it jumping the shark. I promise.

Oh, one more thing.

Please don't send me hate mail. I'm really quite a nice fellow.