Could “Jericho” Be Resurrected

Reports of the demise of “Jericho” may have been a bit pre-mature.

While it’s a long-shot, producer Carol Barbee said Thursday that other networks may be interested in picking up the post-apocolyptic drama that was recently given a pink-slip by CBS.

“We heard there were some rumors, that some of the [network] affiliates had been talking in Las Vegas, that ‘Jericho’ was dead and all that. But we wanted to let everyone know that one of the reasons we haven’t been on to talk [is that] we are working those channels behind the scenes,” Barbee told online radio host Shaun Daily on his audio program. “We are the ones who are trying to broker something with CBS, and there are other networks interested. There is interest.”

But fans shouldn’t get their hopes up too high, Barbee said.

“It’s still a long shot. In the history of television, this [reviving a series] has happened maybe twice.”

In bringing any show on the air, even if its a resurrection attempt, requires a lot of different people who have to put an extremely complicated puzzle together, Barbee said. And hopefully for “Jericho’s” sake, those pieces can fit perfectly into a second season.

“I cannot say that this will work, I don’t know,” she said. “We may, a week from now, have to come on and say it’s over. I hope that’s not what we have to say, and at this moment I don’t feel that way.”

Fans, however, have been making a difference, Barbee said, with their letters, phone calls and delivery of nuts to executives in both New York and Los Angeles.

“Everywhere we go, people are just amazed and inspired by the fan response to this and the nuts campaign,” she said. “I feel like Rocky with people cheering us on as we go by. I had to say thank you. They [the network] are listening, and it is making a difference. It’s just been a wild ride, and we cannot thank you enough.”

The show’s cancellation came as a surprise to the production staff who had heard they were getting a second-season. This may explain why the cliffhanger to the show was so open-ended and provided little or no resolution to the on-going storylines on the show.

“To be cancelled, it was a real gut kick,” Barbee said. “We were all real shocked and upset. It was a time of mourning. Then suddenly with this response, the light starts to come back into the room. It’s like, ‘Oh my God! Somebody cares! People are touched by this, people were passionate about this like we are.’ It really just makes all the difference.”

Barbee said she’s ordered her T-shirt from the New Jersey nut distributor Nuts Online, which is donating all profits to a tornado relief fund of a Kansas town similar to the fictional town of “Jericho.” At last check, Nuts Online had more than 33,000 pounds of nuts ordered, worth just under $46,000. The company has already raised more than $9,000 to help out the town of Greensburg, Kansas, which was virtually destroyed by a tornado last month.

Hear the full interview at Blog Talk Radio.