It's funny. All New Bern had to do was cancel a television series, and if it did, it would never have to ask for food again as they would be flooded with more nuts than they could ever eat.
That's probably how officials at CBS feel right now as yet 5,000 more pounds were delivered to its New York City headquarters today, including 1,000 pounds delivered by Nuts Online president Jeffrey Braverman himself.
"A little sweaty, but we did it," Braverman wrote in a blog that is appearing on its "Save 'Jericho'" fan page just after noon on Thursday. "One thousands pounds in addition to the 4,000 pounds that UPS was unloading right next to us. I, at least, had my uncle to help. The poor UPS guy is all on his own."
As of 2:15 p.m. ET on Thursday, fans had bought a total of 14,684 pounds of nuts, totaling just over $20,000. All but 3,500 pounds have been delivered to CBS' doorstep as fans demand a renewal for the post-apocalyptic drama "Jericho" that got the ax two weeks ago.
Not only have the nut orders continued to roll in to the New Jersey company, but so have the e-mails, Braverman said.
"Almost another 3,000 pounds already, and it's not even 7 a.m.," he wrote on the site's blog early Thursday morning. "And the e-mails. We have received over 1,000 e-mails, and we're just the nut guys! I will write back to each and every e-mail as soon as I can."
News continues to circulate from different cast members of "Jericho" who have expressed shock over the last-minute decision to remove the show from CBS' fall schedule. Ashley Scott, who played Jake Green's ex-girlfriend Emily, told Entertainment Weekly she's not quite over losing the show.
"It infuriates me," she told the magazine. "It is not fair to people who watched because we didn't wrap it up because we through we were coming back. Now viewers will never get a chance to know the whole story of the bombs and what happened, or what is going to happen to these townspeople. It is just rude, and I think people are going to stop watching shows like that because they keep getting shafted by these serials that they get into, then they get canceled and they never get any closure."
Nuts Online's Braverman, who first spoke with Airlock Alpha in an interview last week, has now been doing much larger interviews with radio stations and major newspapers. However, Braverman gave credit in his blog to the online media, which has been covering the entire Save Jericho campaign extensively.
"We didn't get the mainstream media coverage we were hoping for, and it is increasingly clear to me that this is an Internet story," he said. "We, the little people, have to use our own media -- and the more open-minded Internet media -- to keep telling this story."
To participate in different facets of the fan campaign, sites have been set up across the World Wide Web, but the more popular stop has been Jericho Lives. Fans also have been already out together $6,000 to place an ad in the entertainment trade publication Variety.
TV Guide's Michael Ausiello reported Wednesday that there is no word on what CBS will do about "Jericho," but that there was a meeting about the series scheduled for this week.
The Internet has been good to Nuts Online, in the meantime. The Alexa Web traffic tracking site from Amazon.com showed a significant jump in traffic for the company's site. Generally hovering around a decent rank of 200,000 (out of several million Web sites), Nuts Online jumped to a ranking of 22,860 Wednesday, averaging an very strong 4.3 pageviews per visit.
About the Author:
Michael Hinman is the founder and site coordinator for Airlock Alpha and the entire BlipNetwork. He owns Quantum Global Media Inc., the parent corporation of the BlipNetwork. He's a print journalist by day, and lives in Tampa, Fla.