10 Resurrected TV Shows That Should’ve Stayed Dead

2. Jericho

This has nothing to do with the merits of Jericho as a show. It was a fun post-apocalyptic genre show that built up an incredibly rabid cult fanbase. The problem is that Jericho made it a lot harder for future shows to get resurrected the way it was. See, Jericho was cancelled at the end of its first season, with 7.7 million viewers watching the finale, down from the 9.24 million it had averaged. The people who were watching absolutely LOVED the show, though. With the power of the Internet behind them, they rallied and put together the biggest and most well-organized "save our show" campaign in the history of television. They weren't the first, as campaigns from groups like Viewers For Quality Television or even the readers of TV Guide after the release of "The Best Show You're Not Watching" stories had tried to keep bubble or cancelled shows on the air in the past. The Jerucho fans were just bigger, better, and wackier, sending ridiculous amounts of nuts to CBS, inspired by a reference in-show to the Battle of the Bulge. CBS decided to bring Jericho back for a seven episode second season and there was much rejoicing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-weS9r9scE As TV critic Alan Sepinwall pointed out at the time, there was some risk involved with such a massive campaign. If a show coming back from the biggest save our show campaign in history bombed upon its return, what point was there in listening to the fans of any other show who decided to send the network a large quantity of foodstuffs? Well, we got our answer because season 2 bombed, averaging 6.16 million viewers, considerably less than the first season's finale got. CBS and the other networks all took the same moral out of the story: The most passionate fans are not representative. They may have organized an impressive campaign, but it didn't reflect the show's potential viewership or make any kind of impression on non-viewers through media coverage. Thanks to the Jericho campaign being so out of sync with the show's actual viewership, networks are now much less likely to take any kind of "save our show" campaign seriously.