Every time someone who starred in Jericho makes a public appearance, it’s inevitable that they get asked if they’re up for more Jericho, and in particular, a Jericho movie.

Sure, we’d love to see an actual project that is given its full due.  After canceling the 2006 season show, CBS relented to a second season from fan pressure but barely gave it the attention it was due – It popped out a whole 7 episodes and was canceled again.  Sometimes, a show may be a major fan favorite, but the impassioned fans are not as numerous as they need to be.

Some time ago, rumors started floating around that there might be a Jericho movie in the works.

So what’s happening this week with some of our favorite television shows? I’ll fill you in on the vaporizing ratings for Dollhouse, The Sarah Connor Chronicles and others. I touch on some Supernatural & NCIS casting news and a season ending story development. I then sprinkle some CSI:NY bits and round it out with some Lily cast updates.

Let’s check it out.

With the new year, comes some new hope. A few days ago, IF Magazine broke an interesting story saying that a Jericho movie is in the works for theatrical release. But can we believe that?

In the article they talk about Executive producer/Director Jon Turteltaub being pretty jazzed that repeats of the first season are playing on The CW. He feels that if Jericho can hit it big on The CW, there’s a chance it could come back to broadcast TV with new episodes. He did emphasize the phrase “remarkable success,” which means that despite the loyal core of fans, there need to be a lot more viewers willing to fawn all over themselves about Season 1 repeats.

Not only does Comcast bring you all your favorite television programming over the cable-ways, they also make deals that could possibly save some of your favorite programming for additional life on the airways.

Much like the DirecTV / NBC deal that’s resurrecting Friday Night Lights (FNL) for a third season, Comcast and CBS are in talks to bring Jericho back to viewers. This particular tidbit is provided by anonymous “insiders” and it makes for an interesting tidbit, but I’m not sure we can hold our breath on this one yet. It’s too early to tell if these new business models are really going to pay off.

As an example of “these new business models”, let me touch on the Friday Night Lights scenario. Apparently NBC got enough mini-footballs in the mail from FNL fans to consider a resurrection of sorts, and probably helped illuminate the way for the DirecTV – NBC deal being brokered.

“How does it feel to make history?”

That was the final line in the series finale of Jericho last night on CBS – and it got me to wondering; but more on that later.

The last episode came, and went, with ratings that were par for the show over the last few weeks with an approximated 6 million viewers, putting CBS fourth amongst the big networks for the evening. I’m guessing another nut campaign is ‘nut’ going to do the trick again, but nice try.

In this abbreviated run of 22 episodes packed into just 7, information flowed fast and hard – and sometimes that’s the way I like it, cutting to the chase.

There are a few spoilers ahead, so if you’re one of many millions who the networks aren’t counting for viewer ratings, but who are going to download from iTunes or watch the On-Demand version instead, then avert thy eyes.

All us fans of Jericho had better savor the upcoming episode on Tuesday night because it’ll be the last. Jericho has been canceled – again.

Despite the media coverage and thousands of fans who threw their support behind the show, ratings for the series in it’s abbreviated second season just weren’t enough to keep the show afloat. Although if you look at the show’s viewership across a variety of channels is doing pretty well, the advertising money is all about how many people tune in to watch on television only.

Jericho ended it’s first season on a very frustrating note:

The ultimate cliffhanger.

It was “ultimate” because CBS decided to drop the series and had no intention of airing a resolution to the finale. It would be an understatement to say that this annoyed fans of the show, who were inspired and organized enough to orchestrate the comeback for the series.

Though the cliffhanger has been resolved, the 2nd season Nielsen numbers for Jericho aren’t looking so rosy; this season’s episodes are averaging just under 7 million viewers, which is too low a number for any studio to be happy about.

This second season was dedicated to the fans and the sad part is that even though fans were urged to get as many folks as possible watching the show, CBS forgot to mention that they should get as many Nielsen family friends to watch the show.

Have you ever wondered why some TV shows are canceled due to supposedly low ratings when it seems like they have a strong following? Sometimes there are obvious reasons – like when CBS scheduled Jericho up against Fox’s American Idol, or Journeyman possibly being a victim of bad timing with the writers’ strike and too many reality show hitting the networks.

One of the systems that has the biggest impact on what we get to watch on television is called the Nielsen Ratings. It was founded by Arthur Nielsen in 1923 and through statistical sampling measurements, extrapolates what audiences are watching across the country. This information is important to advertisers who pay dearly for much coveted time slots in which they know the audience is watching.

Unfortunately I can’t do a proper review of the Season 2 premiere of Jericho because my DirecTV box picked that hour to reboot itself. I missed about 15 minutes of the episode.

My general reaction is that I’m glad it’s back, and it dove right into the story, almost too quickly. Overall you can tell that they’re trying to pack 22 episodes of content into just seven. It’s almost like the anti-Lost: like they’re trying to pack too much story into each episode.

Still I’m looking forward to seeing where they take the show and hope that the ratings are better than they were last season.

If you watched the show for the first time or are a fan from Season One, go ahead and leave your thoughts below!

Jon Turtletaub.

If you are trying to figure out where you’ve heard that name before, possibly it’s because you remember him as being the director of the 1996 hit Phenomenon. No? Maybe you know him from having produced and directed both National Treasure movies with Nicolas Cage? Oh, wait… maybe you know him from being the executive producer of the surprise fan favorite CBS TV series: Jericho.

Recently Jon Turtletaub had a few words to say about the return of Jericho to CBS for its second season following the fan-driven onslaught of nuts to the studio via the U.S. Postal system (I knew that system would finally come in handy one day).

As everyone may well know, CBS’ post-apocalyptic drama Jericho is coming back for a 2nd season after viewers launched a spirited campaign to save the show, which included sending thousands of pounds of nuts to CBS executives. The passion of the effort seemed to work (or the executives ran out of room to store the nuts) because they decided to bring the show back for an abbreviated 2nd season in a 7 episode run.

Jericho stars Skeet Ulrich and revolves around the survivors of a nationwide nuclear attack, focusing on the residents of a Kansas town named Jericho. The show debuted in September 2006 and did ok, but not great ratings-wise – but when it was pitted against American Idol the numbers killed it for the exec’s.

It’s finally been announced: The abbreviated second season of Jericho will return on Tuesday, February 12th at 10PM. Not the greatest timeslot in the world, but as things currently stand it will be up against The Bachelor, Cane and Law & Order: SVU. It could be worse… it could have been up against American Idol like it was last season. If that wasn’t the dumbest programming decision ever, then I don’t know.

There are a scant seven episodes that will make up season two, and I understand that the arc has been written in such a way as to give a satisfying conclusion to the fans if it isn’t renewed.

Source: SciFiWire

The “will they wrap the story at seven episodes or not” debate regarding Jericho’s return is starting to give me a headache.

Considering the outcry from fans over ending the first season with a cliffhanger and then having the show cancelled, when the show was given a seven episode reprieve the word was that the writers would script the story as an arc that would conclude at the end of the seventh episode. The idea was that the ratings might not be strong enough to sustain the show beyond this, and it would be pretty stupid to aggravate the fans with yet another unresolved cliffhanger.

According to CBS, the shortened second season of Jericho will compress an entire 22 season storyline into just seven episodes.

This latest news indicates that they’re still assuming the worst, and that the show will not go beyond seven episodes when it returns to the air. I’m happy to hear this because it would be the greatest of ironies if they were to get cocky and build another cliffhanger into the seventh episode only to have things end the same way again.

Jericho’s pilot episode was re-broadcast last Friday night and had the best prime time ratings of the evening. If you haven’t heard, Jericho is a TV series set in a post-nuclear-attack-ridden U.S.A. Last season it followed the lives of citizens in a small Kansas town named… Jericho.

Although the show was slow to start, it ended up being a very good series (at least I thought so) but due to an overly long hiatus between the Fall and Spring season plus the fact that when it returned it was scheduled against American Idol, the ratings were sluggish and the show was canceled.

What’s the big deal, you may ask?

Just a grab bag of stuff from the last week and half including my server crash, thoughts on Fantastic Four 2 being rated PG, Jericho’s return, Lost’s ending, why I’m worried about the recently announced Captain America movie, and more!

According to Jericho executive producer Stephen Chbosky, the show may be returning sooner than 2008. It’s not written in stone, but Jericho could be returning as soon as October.

According to Chbosky (don’t ask me how to pronounce that) there is a much smaller budget for the remaining seven episodes, which will impact both casting and location shooting. It will take some creativity to work within the confines of the smaller budget. They do however have a number of main characters signed up to return: Skeet Ulrich (Jake Green), Lennie James (Robert Hawkins), Brad Beyer (Stanley) and Alicia Coppola (Mimi) are coming back and there’s a good chance that Pamela Reed (Gail Green) will be returning as well.

It looks like the huge groundswell of support from fans of CBS’ Jericho may have actually done something.

[Update: Yes, it IS official. 7 new episodes (7? wierd number...) coming next mid-season.]

Before you fans of the show get all crazy-happy, please remember that this is NOT official NOR confirmed… Over at TVGuide.com one of their columnists is saying that a limited, 8 episode run of Jericho may very well happen next season.

Hey folks! Another weekly summary for you including news on the “Save Jericho” campaign, the reveal of Heath Ledger as The Joker from The Dark Knight, Iron Man news and the season finales of Lost and Heroes.

I hope you enjoy the smooth listening sounds of the audio version of Screen Rant.

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Over at Ain’t It Cool News, Merrick is keeping the folks up to date with what’s going on in the “Save Jericho” movement. Not that it’s the best place to do it, considering how the site is filled with visitors who hate pretty much everything, including Jericho.

There’s a huge campaign afoot to send a gigantic amount of nuts to CBS, in honor of the “Nuts” story told in the series finale. As of this writing there are almost 17 THOUSAND pounds of nuts being sent to CBS!

I don’t know if anything will actually be done that will satisfy fans of CBS’ canceled Jericho series, but at the very least it’s apparent that they have heard the outcry and have responded to the fans.

Here’s a quote by Nina Tassler, President of CBS Entertainment:

We have read your emails over the past few days and have been touched by the depth and passion with which you have expressed your disappointment. Please know that canceling a television series is a very difficult decision. Hundreds of people at the Network, the production company and the incredibly-talented creative team worked very hard to build and serve the community for this show — both on-air and online. It is a show we loved too.

Thank you for supporting Jericho with such passion. We truly appreciate the commitment you made to the series and we are humbled by your disappointment. In the coming weeks, we hope to develop a way to provide closure to the compelling drama that was the Jericho story.

This week’s podcast has a little bit of news on The Dark Knight, Iron Man, the upcoming Terminator movies and Stallone’s John Rambo. Also some TV coverage regarding the ill-advised Jericho cancellation and the overly jam-packed Smallville Season 6 finale.

I apologize for a couple of skips and the abrupt ending, it seems my connection was a bit “iffy” today. :-\

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I was all set to go off with a really heinous rant on CBS concerning the Jericho cancellation, but I just got off the phone with someone in their press office who was really nice so I’ll hold back. A little bit.

So it’s official that Jericho is off the air. Having just watched the season (and now, series) finale last night I’m here to tell you that I’m really pissed. To just pull the plug on a show after a huge cliffhanger is in my opinion just a plain slap in the face to the viewers that did tune in to the show.

UPDATE: So, it’s official. Major rant on it’s way soon.

Has the rug been pulled out from underneath the awesome TV series Jericho?

Right now it has to be called a rumour, but unfortunately it may very well turn out to be true since the source is a blog over at TVGuide.com. This really stinks as just a month ago the word was that Jericho was likely to be renewed.

I really hope this doesn’t turn out to be true but I wouldn’t hold my breath. :-\

It’s not confirmed, but the word it that CBS is planning to renew Jericho. I certainly hope that ends up being the case.

Despite being up against the ratings monster (and Sanjaya-powered) American Idol, it’s hanging in there, and was actually number two in it’s time slot last week.

For those of you not familiar with the show, it takes place in Jericho, Kansas after a nuclear attack on the U.S. consisting of about two dozen nukes set off in major cities around the country. It’s compelling drama, showing what life might be like and the struggles that people would have to deal with. In the story Washington D.C. has been wiped out so there is no central government to speak of at this point in the story.

After a long wait, Jericho is finally back and it at least partially answers a lot of questions. CBS’ Jericho is following somewhat in the footsteps of Fox TV’s 24 and American Idol in broadcasting only new episodes sequentially, without any reruns to gum things up and annoy viewers. Although this puts a long gap between what are now know as the “Fall” and “Spring” seasons, I think it’s a good idea for shows like Lost, Heroes and those mentioned above. All of these shows are sequential in nature, depending on the episodes that came before, and it’s aggravating to see a rerun in between new episodes on shows like these.

Jericho is one of those “ongoing mystery” shows that were spawned by the success of ABC’s Lost. It also happens to be one of the shows (along with NBC’s Heroes) which has taken that original concept and improved it substantially. These shows have done that by actually moving their respective plots forward and revealing what’s happening in the story and who the characters are at a pace that doesn’t leave the viewer feeling like they’re getting jerked around.