My super secret fake insiders and ninjas are telling me that this season of CHUCK is amazingcakes! That this could be the bestest yetest! They expect the fans will go frakin' bananamuffins if the show is canceled after such a kickarse season!
So what can fans do to prevent that from happening???
How can we SAVE CHUCK yet again?!
Truth is, there isn't much we can do. Sure, we can keep being who we are, trying to get new viewers and talking about CHUCK online and in the really realzies world, and putting on events and whatever else. But the reality is that these things only give the appearance of dedication/strength, and do little to affect the ratings necessary to bring the show back for more episodes/seasons. But there may be a solution.
In season 3, for the first few episodes, NBC/WB did not put the show online. They held it back. And what happened? The Nielsen ratings INCREASED over the previous season. Then, they put it online and what happened? The Nielsen ratings DECREASED. And within a few episodes, the ratings were in a free-fall.
Now, there is always the possibility that CHUCK lost viewers because of the Shaw/Sarah romance arc, or because Hannah left, or because the quality of the show declined, but another contributing factor could very well be that as time went on people decided to watch it online instead. This has been shown to work at CBS, where they do not provide online viewing for their highest rated shows. This model has increased ratings for some shows, season to season, at CBS.
I know that many fans rely on CHUCK being available for both online viewing via Hulu.com and NBC.com, but also for pay-per-view via iTunes, XBOX Live, Playstation Network, Amazon.com and such services. These fans would not be happy having to either watch the show live or DVR it. To those fans I ask this: do you want more CHUCK or do you want to get new episodes the following day and potentially lose the show after 13 episodes?
Will this strategy guarantee that the show will continue on past this season? Nope. But chances are that repeating the exact same strategy that resulted in a loss of viewers last season will result in another loss of viewers and cancellation this season.
What say you, CHUCK fans?
UPDATE: Funnily enough, Televisionary posted this article about the same subject today.
