Arun Stephens

I seem to be getting a few hits about Journeyman (the show that is under threat of cancellation!) so I thought I’d write a bit more.

The people over at savejourneyman.net and the other Save Journeyman sites have decided upon sending Rice-A-Roni to the NBC offices. Originally it was going to be aspirin, because Dan gets headaches before he goes back in time, but they realised that charities wouldn’t be likely to accept a whole bunch of medicine. Instead they stuck to foodstuffs. Rice-A-Roni, originally from San Francisco, is known as “The San Francisco Treat”. (This is all new to me!)

Last week a new episode of Life aired in Journeyman’s regular time slot. I think it rated slightly better than Journeyman has in the past few weeks, but not by much. It was also helped by CSI: Miami repeats being shown on CBS and I can’t remember what was on ABC. I also don’t know how heavily the timeslot change was promoted. Fans of Life would have followed it to Monday if they knew about it, but people who had never watched Journeyman aren’t likely to want to watch it if they didn’t know about.

Tonight it airs at its regular timeslot, after two hours of Deal or No Deal. I’m not sure whether that’s popular over there in the States. And if it, are Deal or No Deal viewers likely to stick around to watch a pretty much sci-fi show, at 10PM? I doubt it.

I think, unfortunately, that unless NBC moves it to a different timeslot, Journeyman’s days are numbered.

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According to the overnight ratings at Zap2it, Journeyman didn’t come in completely last place last night. CSI: Miami won the night, but Journeyman came in second for total number of viewers (but third for number of households, which is what they actually care about). So that’s some nice news. But not that encouraging.

The people at the Save Journeyman page have a new campaign to send Rice-A-Roni (I have no idea what that is) to NBC. Apparently this Rice-A-Roni (it sounds like a combination of rice and macaroni) is made in San Francisco, where the series is set.

It will be unfortunate if Journeyman is cancelled, but as long as it gets a decent ending (and it looks like it will) then it won’t be too bad.

UPDATE: Here’s another article about Journeyman’s ratings for 26 November, from a different “Save Journeyman” blog. 

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Journeyman is a new show for NBC this year, airing Monday nights at 10:00, after Heroes. It’s about, Dan Vasser (Kevin McKidd, Rome), a reporter for the San Francisco Register, who seems to suffer from regular headaches. Now, that doesn’t sound like an interesting story, except unlike most headaches, Dan’s headaches are accompanied by time travel. It’s kind of like Quantum Leap for the 21st century, except Dan doesn’t take the place of someone from the past. And there’s no Sam (although there is his ex-girlfriend, Livia, also a time traveller, who helps him out from time to time, much to the initial chagrin of Dan’s present-day wife).

In each episode, Dan tracks the life of someone, and attempts to put things right. He’s still learning the rules of time travel, and in the latest episode he learnt the hard way how changing history can affect the present.

Dan’s wife, Katie, knows about the time travel (Dan proved it by burying her engagement ring he was getting fixed under the deck of their house in a locked box with the newspaper from before they met), and, until Dan changed history, his brother Jack, a cop, was also beginning to believe him.

But I am writing this not to give you a rundown of the show, but to encourage you in America to watch it! Because otherwise it might be cancelled. It’s doing pretty poorly in the ratings. It does have decent lead-in with Heroes, but this second season of Heroes is nowhere near as good as the first. It’s only up against CSI: Miami on CBS and, it turns out, a new(ish) show I’ve never heard of, October Road, on ABC (up till last week it was against The Bachelor, which I didn’t know they were still making!)

Please watch Journeyman! (Especially if you have a Nielsen box!)

UPDATE: Apparently there’s a bit of a campaign to save Journeyman: See http://savejourneyman.funurl.com/ and http://save-journeyman.blogspot.com/ for more details.

Personal Rants cancellation, journeyman, nbc