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Canned heat ... ABC is feeling it, thanks to the Save Relativity Team. This consortium of eight women, who meet on-line for strategy sessions, intends to do whatever it takes to save the critically acclaimed but low-rated ABC drama, Relativity.
This is no half baked effort. So far, dozens of cans of ravioli, a favorite of Doug (played by Adam Goldberg), one character in a fairly large ensemble cast, have made their way to ABC entertainment chief Jamie Tarses' office.
Tarses, whom the Team rightly surmised will decide the fate of Relativity, can look forward to more of the same. At least another 60 cans are in the mail, and since the team connected with the people who make Chef Boyardee (American Home Foods), which last week agreed to become a sort of quasi-sponsor of the grassroots campaign, the sky's the limit. Each can carries the handwritten message "Don't Can Relativity."
Why do they care?
"There are many of use whose needs are not being met on television, so we don't tend to watch much TV," says team member Ivy Vale, who lives in Manhattan. She has never done anything like this. Like the other women in the group, she is in her 30s, well-educated and working. "There is an intelligence level in the writing that gives a lot of credit to the viewer, allowing us to draw our own conclusions, unlike most shows, which tend to hit the viewer over the head to make a point." Why should you care?
Network executives would be wise to take note of how media-savvy the Relativity Team is. It's a look at the future, brought to you, in part, by the World Wide Web. They have a logo and a slogan: "Save Relativity, because it doesn't take an Einstein to recognize amazing television." They have a Web page (http://www.oocities.org/TelevisionCity/1404), established in December, when they began worrying about the fate of the show.
SRT's intial press release (yes, they put out a press release) outlined a range of reasons for the show's poor ratings, including the fact that ABC kept moving the show to different nights, that its primary home at 10p.m. on Saturday night is also the prime date night for the show's target audience of 18-34 and that ABC has failed to properly promote the show.
In addition to an active Web page, SRT created and is selling T-shirts, not to defray their cost, but to buy advertising time on TV to help promote the show.
Whether Tarses untimately cans the show or brings it back for a second season is almost beside the point. The nature of diaglogue between viewer and programmer has been changed forever. Others will go where Vale and crew dared to go - that is, public. Very, very public.
P.S. The Team that thinks of everything has made arrangements for the ravioli to ultimately be donated to homeless shelters.