Hi, everyone!

It's looking like SCIFI has already pulled the plug on The Dresden
Files, and that they just haven't announced it yet. (Why the delay on
announcing it? We can only speculate.) But given all the hints, I
think it's time we make some difficult decisions of our own. What
would be the most effective ways to bring the show back to life?

We don't have a bunch of money, but we do have a lot of dedicated fans
who have been working very hard to generate a show of support for The
Dresden Files.

Here are my thoughts; I'd love to get a discussion going to see what
everyone else thinks.

1. Continue as we are: write letters, write emails, call SCIFI and
leave voicemail.

PROS: This keeps Harry's fanbase in front of SCIFI in a visible,
tangible way.

CONS: People are getting tired and frustrated. We've been writing for
three months, to no apparent effect. And SCIFI doesn't even think they
need to write us back, or give us an update through SCIFI Wire. I've
personally spent a LOT of time trying to get people to just sit down
and write a quick note, and a fair amount of money mailing in letters
for other people. I know that other fans (like Belynda) have also
spent time and money helping to run letter drives and to promote the
need to write SCIFI.

2. Organize a Jericho-style campaign, in the hopes that it will make a
bigger splash and that we can draw some publicity with it.

PROS: It worked for Jericho. It has press appeal. Fans will be more
excited about sending in an object than they are about having to write
a letter.

CONS: There are a lot of cons.

A) While this did work with Jericho, it hasn't worked for a lot of
other shows. There's a great article on dresdencity.org about how
these kinds of campaigns can backfire, so if we do go ahead with
something like this, it would be a good idea to procede with caution.

B) We'd need to pick an object that is inexpensive, so that most fans
can afford to send one in. It would have to be something that is easy
to get -- not something you can only get from one supplier on the
Internet, and not something that your local stores are going to run
out of quickly if a ton of people suddenly buy one.

And this is my personal preference, but I think it should be something
that can be donated to charity or eaten or otherwise used. If we send
SCIFI half a million little rubber skulls... what will they do with
all those skulls? Where food could be donated to a homeless
shelter/food bank when the campaign was over and someone else will
have benefitted.

3. Target another network and ask them to pick up the show from Lionsgate.

PROS: If SCIFI has already decided, without a doubt, that they do not
want to pay for more episodes of the show, we could spend months
wasting time trying to convince them otherwise. Going to another
network means starting with people who might be more open-minded about
The Dresden Files. For example, Lifetime has been showing Blood Ties.
Harry's fanbase is practically identical with the fanbase for Blood
Ties. And it's possible that Lionsgate might be able to coordinate
with us on this -- if they could approach Lifetime with a big stack of
fanmail in hand...

CONS: If we pick the wrong network, we could spend months wasting time
writing them, too. We'd need to figure out who, realistically, might
benefit from picking up the show. We need to do some serious research,
and maybe even contact the networks we want to target and feel them
out before we start a big letter writing campaign.

4. Push SCIFI for webisodes of The Dresden Files.

PROS: SCIFI has just announced that they're going to start making
short episodes of Farscape for web-only viewing, to be shown via their
new SCIFI Pulse program. Short episodes are probably cheaper, and
could be a way for SCIFI to grow Harry's fanbase until the network is
confident that putting it back on the air will be profitable.

CONS: I don't know how short these webisodes are going to be, but if
they are shorter than 20 minutes, they might not be worth doing. Each
Dresden Files episode tends to be a mystery, and it's pretty darned
hard to squeeze a good mystery into a short period of time (because
the hero has to have time to figure things out). Making shorter
episodes might mean changing the nature of the show, giving it more of
an adventure feel, or requiring a large plot arc where only small
amounts of progress are made in each episode.

On the bright side, this could turn out to be a PRO in disguise --
shorter, faster-paced episodes might be even more appealing to viewers
than the slower, mystery-structured episodes that we got in season one.

Ok, those are my four suggestions. Does anyone else have a fifth or
sixth? What do you think?

Personally, I'm leaning toward 3 & 4, but that's just me.

I've just started a yahoo group for the discussion of these options,
called saveharrydresden-strategy. If you're interested in helping to
push the campaign forward, please join!

Bon Johnston
Save Harry Dresden!
http://maenad.tripod.com/saveharrydresden/