Push Back

As I'm sure most people have already heard, South of Nowhere has been pushed back to the fall. Everyone is up in arms, saying this is the-N's way of punishing it's viewer and the supporters of the show who have sent in letters, postcards and compasses...

Every since the news broke I have been trying to figure out why they would do that. Why not just let the show finish it's run and quietly let it go away. Why let the fans have even more time to make noise and gain support?

Many theories have been flying around, the most popular being that the-n doesn't think that the fanbase will be able to keep up an active campaign throughout the entire wait, which is about 6 months. That the fans will finally give up and the noise will quiet down but I think the exact opposite is happening here. The-n needs us to keep up the noise.

I don't think the-n made the move to spite us for making a fuss, for trying to save our show. On the contrary, it's because of the noise we made and what they are banking on that we will continue to make that they pushed the season back. I think it was a purely financial reason. It doesn't make it any better but follow my reasoning here.

The-Sarah, the general manger of the-n, said in her post that they need the extra time to make extra content to give it a proper send off. That makes no sense considering the extra content was already planned before hand and we know it was because since the first season an employee at the-n was feeding people spoilers at the yahoo group. Is is only known as M, but it has proven time and time again that he does have real inside information.

Knowing that, the reasoning behind the push back of the second half of Season 3, couldn't be to give them more time to do these things.

Mostly because Season 3b, as it use to be called, is now being passed off as a new season, when it's not, it's been filmed and in the can since last year. Originally, we were only suppose to have a couple months break between the first and second half of Season 3. The reasons we were given was because then it would a shorter wait between Season 3 and Season 4 (A real season 4).

Then I put on my smart glasses and pondered this, what does the network have to gain by pushing the season back to almost a year since it last aired? Then I looked at the time they were talking about.... The fall, when it airs with a new season of Degrassi, their highest rated show. It would seem then that they are trying to boost the ratings, but why? By the time it airs, the cast would have moved on to other projects, seeing as more than a year will have passed since they last filmed. Then it all kinda clicked. Sweeps.

They want to raise the ratings so they can get more advertising dollars because it's not based on the show but on the time slot. Ok from a business point of view that makes sense but why not run one of the new shows that they are hyping on their site? If South wasn't delivering the numbers they wanted before why would it be different now? The biggest difference between South of Nowhere's season 3 premiere and the premiere of what they are calling Season 4 is the fans efforts to save the show. The fans going out there and getting the word out about South of Nowhere and Spashley.

The fans are now creating a buzz around this show. We, the fans, are creating more noise about this show than it's own network ever did, plus not only are we raising awareness about South of Nowhere, we're raising awareness about the-n. It's in the-n's best financial interest to push the show back. All they have to do is sit back and let us drum up the ratings for them, thereby making them more money come sweeps time. And in the end, we still don't save our show. It's also been prevented from being shopped around now because it's still under contract to the-n until it airs.

We have been put into a very difficult position because some don't want to give up the fight, accept defeat, but to keep fighting means to help line the pockets of the very network that is using us and not even considering uncancelling our show. Some think the-n will save the show if the ratings are up, but given the timeline from when it was filmed to when it will finally air again, that seems incredibly unlikely, most of the actors will have found other work. Some believe we can get another network to pick it but but it will have to be a pretty big network to entice the actors back, that is if they aren't already under contract to somewhere else.

South of Nowhere fans and Spashley fans have been put smack dab in the middle of a rock and a hard place. Only time will tell what we do from here.