Save Faking It

The Dummy's Guide to Saving MTV's "Faking It"

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Faking It Fans Make Their Demands Known–With Donuts

Months after the cancellation of MTV’s 2014 breakout hit Faking It, fans are still determined to bring it back on the air. Fans pulled together a petition almost as soon as the news broke; after ac…

Finally some press coverage! Will there be more to come?

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A Month in Review (July 2016)

What has happened in the past month? What is currently going on, and what are the next steps? Here is a summary

WHAT HAS BEEN DONE THIS MONTH

1.) Trending has continued

The weekly trending on Twitter has continued

01-Jul: "Revive Faking It" 08-Jul: "We Love Faking It" 13-Jul: "Katie Stevens On Nashville" 15-Jul: "Always Faking It" 22-Jul: "We Miss Faking It" 29-Jul: "Support Faking It"

2.) Faking It has won awards, again

6-Jul: Faking It wins not one but actually four “TV Scoop Awards 2016″: Best Comedy, Best Comedy Actress, Best Comedy Actor, Most Heartbreaking Cancellation: http://www.eonline.com/news/777950/tv-scoop-awards-2016-and-the-winners-are

3.) The community has been launched

14-Jul: The first beta version of https://www.savefakingit.org goes live 24-Jul: After some fine-tuning and many interesting conversations, https://www.savefakingit.org opens officially for business. Join us now!

WHAT PEOPLE ARE CURRENTLY BUSY WITH

1.) Reinitiating the “donut delivery”

There will be donuts! This blog contains instructions how to do that yourself ([1], [2], [3]), but there is now a simpler alternative now to participate: If you just want to get your message through to MTV/Netflix/Hulu, we are happy to add your letter to our next delivery. Please get in touch with @hey-boo-boo2​ or @savefakingit​ (on Twitter: @TangledSuperFan and @hey_boo_boo2) or join us on savefakingit.org. And if you do not have any time but are happy to sponsor some donuts, you are welcome, too! "Donut donations” can be made through PayPal to “[email protected]”.

2.) Collecting intel

We are currently doing our homework: What is happening at MTV? Which arguments could convince Hulu to continue the show? How would a business plan look like? Who would be the right people to talk to at Viacom? What other options are there to continue the show? And so on. If detective work is your thing, or if you want to bring your MBA knowledge to practical use, join us on savefakingit.org!

3.) Creating a video (see here)

Update 02-Aug-2016: I asked for it, and now we have got a first video!

4.) Trying to get in touch with crew and cast

We realized that it will be difficult to save this show without a creative head and without some essential inside information. (Read here more about it.) Getting in touch with crew and cast is a tedious task, but we are trying.

THE NEXT STEPS

Grow the community, find more supporters

Continue the initiatives and tasks that we have alread started

Establish first contacts with Hulu and Netflix

Collect and develop further ideas

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Quickstart to Saving “Faking It”

⇒ Join the “Save Faking It” Community ⇐

What everybody should do right now: Sign the Petition

What everybody can do easily: Trend on Twitter Tell MTV how you feel Make use of Netflix' “Suggest TV shows or movies” feature [Updated] Ask Netflix to pick up Faking It as Netflix Original Ask Hulu to pick up Faking It as Hulu Original

What Netflix customers can do in addition: Search Faking It on Netflix

What Hulu customers can do in addition: Binge-watch Faking It on Hulu

What everybody can do with little investment: Send letters or postcards (through online service) to MTV Send letters or postcards (through online service) to Netflix Send letters or postcards (through online service) to Hulu

What you can do if you want to impress others: Send Donuts to MTV Send Donuts to Netflix Send Donuts to Hulu

Want to support me? See Open Issues Have got an idea? Tell me about it What is all of this? Who are you? About this blog

What you can do if you have special knowledge: Help to identify decision makers at MTV [Updated] Confirm/improve decision makers at Netflix [Updated] Verify decision makers at Hulu

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Join the “Save Faking It” Community!

Want to bring your favorite show back? Tired of tweeting or blogging alone? Then join us on www.savefakingit.org! We need your opinion, your talent, your expertise, your contacts -- and your dedication!

After thorough evaluation and testing (see here), the community on https://www.savefakingit.org is now officially in operation and welcoming new members!

You can self-register a new user/password, or you can use your existing Google, Facebook or Microsoft Live account to sign in. If you register a new user/password, you will receive an invite e-mail. In case you cannot find such a mail within a few minutes, please check your spam folder. If there is still nothing after 10-15 minutes, then please get in touch with me.

We are looking forward to having all of you on board! The more the merrier --  we know that pulling this off can only succeed if we all work together!

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What Netflix’ Decision Not to Rescue “Agent Carter” Means for Faking It

Netflix has explained why the decided not to rescue Agent Carter. This decision has several implications for Faking It fans.

Peggy Carter has many fans: Nearly 128′000 supporters have signed the online petition to bring her back. And “Agent Carter” is part of the Marvel Universe, which Netflix addresses already with multiple original series. So why was this not a perfect fit? Ted Sarandos, Netflix’ chief content officer, states two reasons in the article on Entertainment Weekly:

We’re looking for truly original brands to own,” he says, “and in that Marvel space we already have [original comic book shows]” => No remarks here. Not original enough. Fine with me.

The structure of Marvel’s existing international deals for Agent Carter made that tricky. [...] “So when you pick it up, being able to pick it up globally is difficult even after it’s canceled. Some of those output partners still had it on the air, so they would argue its covered by their output [deals]. => Red alert! If “deal complexity” is an issue, this could be a deal-breaker for Faking It, too!

We know that Faking It is globally broadcasted by numerous networks that are part of Viacom (MTV, Nickelodeon/Nicknight) -- not a problem. It is available on iTunes, Google Play, Amazon Video and VUDU, where I expect any owner to be able to pull it anytime. And it is available on Hulu -- but details of the deal are unknown. Hulu has evidently a non-exclusive usage right, but does that mean a new content owner could take it down at any time? Or do they have contracts with a fixed maturity (e.g. two years?) I have no idea. If you do, please let me know. In addition to that, there are apparently smaller regional TV networks that broadcast Faking It. Solar Entertainment’s “etc” on Philippines is such a station.

Do you know of further stations that show(ed) Faking It and do not belong to Viacom? Please tell us, we need to know that!

Take-away for Faking It fans:

If we find further TV networks that showed Faking It but do not belong to Viacom, then we can take Netflix out of the equation. They will want to own the full global rights, and they are apparently not interested in complex deals. And even if we do not find other TV networks, the existing deal between Viacom and Hulu could be an issue. => In this case we need to concentrate on Hulu (who have no business in e.g. Philippines and hence should not care about local TV networks). And if the Viacom-Hulu deal is non-exclusive, then we could look for further US centric alternatives (Freeform? No idea, send your suggestions).

If we have reason to assume that there are no big hurdles for Netflix to pick up Faking It, then apparently a key player to look at is “Ted Sarandos”. I for one did not have him on my watch list until today.

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We Need A Video Clip!

Are you able to create decent looking video clips? Love Faking It? I have a job for you! +++ Difficulty: hard +++ Time required: depends on your experience (4-20 hours) +++ Costs: none +++

There must be a gazillion Faking It video clips on YouTube, and although I have not watched too many, I do believe we need one more: I would like to have a video that explains in ca. 2 minutes what Faking It is and give an idea why it is great. We could put this video on the petition page and include it as a reference whenever we try out a new press contact. (If you were a journalist, wouldn’t you like to watch a YouTube video clip if that saves you some background research?) Plus, if the video is attractive and reaches a solid number of views, this would be a value in its own.

This is the video that originally gave me idea. The beginning is great, but then it loses traction a bit. It is too long, and the comedic potential of Faking It is not shown. But still, you will understand what I am looking for:

This one is almost the opposite: If focuses on the fun side only; you would not even guess that Faking It is a romantic comedy. The choice of scenes is ok but could even be improved. But technically it is great! The fast pacing is exactly what I have in mind, and I like the graphical style a lot! (Part 2 is even better!)

Here is another fan made video that caught my attention. The content is something completely different, but I like it aesthetically: the filters, the cross-fading and again, the pacing. (Unfortunately I cannot watch it without getting a little weepy; not helpful for its intended purpose.)

So: Are you able to create a video clip and got the idea? Want to see your video on the petition page? Then please get back to me. The petition has about 28k supporters, so your video might reach a decent number of viewers. If you are not able to create videos, then you could help nevertheless: We could use a script! If selecting scenes and their order and writing overlay texts is your thing, then please let me know.

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What Faking It Fans Can Learn from Galavant’s Possible Return

I was pretty bummed when the story ‘Galavant’ Season 3: Series To Possibly Return On A New Platform appeared a few days ago. But the article is worth a second look.

No, I do not have have anything against Galavant, I just had never heard of it until their fans tried to challenge Faking It fans at the TV Scoop Awards 2016 (where they stood no chance, of course). What I understand is that Galavant is an innovative, unusual comedy, and though it is being provided to the general audience it primarily appeals to viewers who appreciate non-mainstream entertainment. So why are there now talks to continue Galavant with ABC (its original network), Hulu and Netflix? Or rather: Why are there no such talks about Faking It?

The fanbase does not explain that difference:

Online petition:

Galavant: 22k signatures since 3-May-2016

Faking It: 27k signatures since 13-May-2016

Amount of tumblr articles according to Google:

Galavant: 66k hits

Faking It: 189k hits

Trending on Twitter:

Galavant: occasionally (numbers unknown, found only screenshots with “just started trending”

Faking It: weekly, in multiple countries (with up to 90k tweets in a single country)

So what does make the difference then?

The Galavant crew is seriously behind this attempt. They have got a showrunner and an executive producer who are seeking out discussion with ABC, Netflix and Hulu. The cast made an “epic music video to thank fans trying to save show”. And “prominent actors” are talking to the press.

Faking It has got: Carter, who is scaring off more parts of the fanbase with every interview and public appearance that he makes. (Tumblr is still burning of rage about his vision on how he would have continued the story.) Carter who does not believe in the potential that the show could be continued elsewhere. (BTW, in that very interview Carter stated that they do not have a studio and therefore “there isn't an entity that could shop” the show. At the same time he stated that continuing Faking It as a web-only original is not an option, because digital budgets are too small. Question: Why does the “not having an entity to acquire the rights” argument not apply to a web-only series? Sounds inconsistent to me.) And that is about it. Some of the cast/writers/crew are occasionally keeping touch with the fans, but I am not aware of anybody taking the lead. So, if we get the attention of Netflix or Hulu -- which I am absolutely positive about being possible -- who would they actually talk to? Who would explain his/her vision for Faking It and would be able to deliver it, if given a chance to?

That means we either need to get Carter back into the lead, but I am afraid he is too busy trying to develop and sell a new show. Or we (?) find somebody else that develops his/her own vision for the future of Faking It and is willing to discuss that with Netflix/Hulu and able to deliver it.

Yes, there is still the possibility to convince MTV to uncancel Faking It. This would be the easiest solution for everybody. But having read more and more articles about Netflix (like this) or Hulu (e.g. this), I am not so keen anymore to go back to the old status quo. Maybe MTV was never the ideal home for Faking It in the first place.

I am eager to hear your thoughts.

________ Footnote: What makes Galavant’s producer prefer Hulu over Netflix (see aforementioned article)? Tell me if you have an idea.

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Pieces of a Game Plan to Save Faking It, part 2: Management compatible “elevator pitches”

Convincing managers is possible -- if you have done your homework

The decision makers at MTV/Netflix/Hulu are first of all top managers. If you want to convince them, you have to speak their language and follow their logic. In other words, we need target-specific “elevator pitches”, and we need business plans to back them up.

Example: You are manager at Netflix and asked if you favor picking up Faking It. The facts are the following (N.B.: all numbers are completely made up -- still):

75% of the Faking It viewers also watch “Orange Is the new Black” (one of your most successful shows). It is therefore fair to assume that 3/4 of the OITNB viewers would watch Faking It, too.

The production costs of Faking It per hour are 65% of the costs per hour of OITNB.

Faking It had up to 1 million viewers on a niche channel in the US but estimated to have been watched by 8 million viewers worldwide -- 50% of which from countries with very low Netflix subscription rates. Technically you can reach all viewers, unlike your competitors (yet).

80% of the Faking It viewers that are not yet Netflix customers said they would sign up to Netflix to watch new seasons of Faking It.

Your conclusion as a Netflix manager would be:

You know that this show will be watched by a relevant group of your subscribers (i.e. this will not be a flop)

You found a comparatively cheap way to create content for that group (i.e. this makes sense economically)

You have got something that 3 mio. potential new subscribers want to have (i.e. you will gain new subscribers and annoy your competition)

Deal?

Or, if you are a manager at Hulu, picking up this show means that

You have content that is targeting an audience that you have not addressed so far

You have content that a clearly identifiable core group of your main competitor’s subscribers will want to watch

You can produce that content at lesser costs than the show that you are competing with

You already have got the distribution rights, so the negotiation will not even be a big deal

Could you say no?

And here is one if you are an MTV manager:

The first season of Faking It had a relevant average of 950,000 viewers.

The first season of Scream had 750,000 viewers. You have made massive promotion for its season two, but the numbers have gone down to 400,000. This is the number at which you decided to cancel Faking It (for which you hardly made any promotion at all this year).

Two of the three new shows introduced this year have been flops (Happyland: 370,000 viewers and Eye Candy: 590,000 viewers).

Admittedly the ratings for Faking It were bad this year, but the show is still collecting awards, it is supported by the most loyal fanbase that you have seen in years and you keep getting bad press for months now.

Proof for the bad promotion: S3E01 lost 57% of viewers compared to the average of season 2 -- which ended on a massive cliffhanger. Nobody had noticed that the show was back.

Besides missing promotional support, the main reason for the bad ratings of Faking It seem to be controversial developments in the storyline / decisions by the show-runner throughout 2015/16.

So what is more likely: That you introduce a completely new show and it will be a success? Or that you reboot Faking It, maybe under new management, and successfully reconquer the original viewership?

You get the idea.

If you want to help, then you could start to research the figures above. And of course, whatever general idea you have got to facilitate a figure-based decision is most welcome! I will put some information that I found on Twitter trending which might be used to estimate the size of the international viewership.

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Pieces of a Game Plan to Save Faking It, part 1: Getting attention

I wanted to write this down for quite some time: My thoughts on how to reach our target, to derive actual to-dos and trigger further ideas (A word of warning: This should be a mind-map instead of a text, but I hate mind-maps.)

In brief, what we should focus on right now is to

Get the attention of decision makers.

If we have their attention: Feed them with convincing arguments.

Getting attention is not easy. So far we made ourselves heard on Twitter and sent im some feedback, but there is no hard evidence that any decision maker of either MTV, Netflix of Hulu has actually ever heard anything about “Faking It”. So what can we do to get attention?

Get into mainstream media

Create/maintain pressure on organizational units (= flood PR departments, keep call center busy, force product management to look into this)

Organize public events that cannot be overlooked (e.g. physical delivery of petition)

Identify the right decision makers and establish a direct channel to them

Getting into mainstream media is on its own not an easy task. What we need is to

identify specific new papers, news outlets, agencies or maybe local TV stations,

establish a contact,

have an actual message that appeals to the target group of the media.

Establishing a contact is something that one (unknown) person alone can hardly succeed with. Most news outlets that I looked into have some form of “report a story” button, hotline or e-mail address, but first attempts to reach out remained unheard. The can ignore one of us, but if we can mobilize a large group of people to call a newspaper or to write to a journalist, then they will hear us.

And if we have their attention, then we need to have something ready that can be immediately recognized as a actual story that is worthy of being covered by that newspaper/journal/blog. So preparing a story upfront is a must.

I do not expect that one generic press release will do the trick. While it would be good to have one, just as backup, we should rather present input that can be easily adopted (ideally simply copied & pasted). Newspapers used to pay per line, so if we help journalists to produce a story in a short amount of time, our chances of being picked up should increase significantly.

Recap:

Need many people ready to bang on many doors and to fund events (donuts)

Need bigger group of supporters

Need to finalize setup of community

Make promotion, e.g. via petition and smaller blogs etc.

Need a reusable story to make reaching out more efficient

Need a promo video (more about that later)

Need ideas for specific stories that matches the audience of specific  news outlets

Need writers to prepare stories/articles ready to be adopted

Need to increase findability, so that whoever looks into this topic for whatever reason finds the right person to talk to

Create an outpost on all important social media sites

Should establish a “face” (spokesperson) for our movement, establish him/her as a brand

Would like to go viral with something -- a story? a funny video?

Some thoughts on what we need once we have got the attention of a decision maker will follow in part two.

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Why is it So Damn Hard to Find a Home for a Community? [DONE]

 And I thought this was the easy part

Update 12-Jul-2016: We have subscribed to a webhosting package, registered a domain name and are currently trying out various self-hosted software packages Update 14-Jul-2016: Our self-hosted version of “HumHub” is now running on https://www.savefakingit.org. Come join us for beta testing!

You can read it in so many articles: “A community of Internet users has...” done whatever marvelous thing. Never have I bothered for a second with how they did it. This is the Internet. How hard can it be to do the same if I ever needed to?  Very hard, I am currently learning.

Before looking into of the available options and services, I made up my mind about what is needed, and I came up with this list:

Must have

We need room for discussion, obviously. Ideas have to be collected, discussed, elaborated. I.e. some kind of forum or group chat is necessary.

It must be possible to form groups or set up topics and discuss things only with who is interested. But who is working on a topic needs to see the full history of the discussion.

We need something to track tasks and assignments. A lot of things need to be organized, so we must make sure nothing is forgotten, and we want to avoid that two people are unknowingly working on the same task.

Participation (= registration) must be easy. Anybody interested should be able to join. Software that works on invite-only basis does not fit.

Anonymous participation must be possible. Not everybody can participate under their real name.

We cannot spend much money. Ideally we should find a free solution. Enterprise class software with enterprise pricing is out of the question.

Should have

We should have a calendar, to publish trending days, keep track of events, e.g. the next voting for an award etc.

We have to collect and share content. Either we find a solution where we can upload files or attached them to posts/tasks/calendar data. Or we need at least something like a link list.

The solution needs to be reasonably easy to use. Not everybody is an IT expert.

Nice to have

I would expect that various texts (maybe even graphics?) are developed by a group, or at least somebody is writing and somebody else editing/proofreading. Therefore some collaboration features would be nice: integration of Google docs or an Etherpad etc.

Probably the group needs to decide on alternatives. A poll/voting feature would be nice.

It would be nice if a solution allowed you to either create a new login yourself or alternatively allow you to log in from your Facebook/Google/Twitter account (N.B.: This is usually save. The service (and the moderators) will not know who you are even if you log in from Facebook).

N.B.: I am not even expecting one single tool or service to provide all of this. I am looking for a solution, which could be built up by combining multiple services somehow.

And here is my conclusion after a week of investigating and trying out stuff over the past week.

=> Facebook, Google+ communities, Google Groups

Not seriously considered. No task tracking, not possible to participate anonymously. Support discussion (and in the case of Google Groups also discussion by topic), but does not help with anything else.

=> Wrike (https://www.wrike.com)

Truly great project management features. If I had to manage a project right now and could choose my weapon, this is what I would use. But only task-related commenting is possible. No free discussion, no calendar, no collaboration features, no voting.

=> Taskulu (https://taskulu.com)

Good project management features, very basic discussion capabilities, no further features. But it is basically a pretty Kanban board, and if you do not know what that means, then you will most likely not want to work with it. Comparable to Trello.

=> Asana (https://asana.com)

Very good project management features, basic support of discussions, calendar. Still, the interface is written for IT people, and it requires the admin to send invite mails. (I.e. we need your e-mail address before we can let you in.) I am worried it will scary off people, but feel free to convince me otherwise.

=> Glip (https://glip.com)

Overall really good: Can organize people in teams and ad-hoc groups, has a calendar, supports collaboration on texts, has link lists. But it requires invites, i.e. no self-registration. And their support was not so impressive. (Received a completely irrelevant answer to a specific question). 

=> HumHub (https://www.humhub.com)

Facebook-like discussion, meetings, calendar, polls, rudimentary task management and users can self-register! Impressive Opens Source Software, I like it! But you need to host it yourself, because the cloud option which the vendor offers is too expensive (EUR 99,00 per month). Self-hosting is not an option unless there is a Linux administrator among us (ideally even two).

And that is about it. I looked into a bunch of services but dismissed them immediately; most of them were by far too expensive. To my surprise I was not able to identify a solution that can be used out of the box. Sure, there is always the possibility to do everything on your own (get a root server, install Drupal and MyBB and hack something together), but I am not expecting any of us to have enough time and knowledge for a DIY approach.

And now?

Do you know how other communities are organizing themselves? If yes, then please tell me right away! Likewise, if you looked into Glip or Asana and believe this is what we should work with, or if you know somebody willing to sponsor a HumHub license, please get back to me.

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A Month in Review (June 2016)

What has happened in the past month? What is currently going on, and what are the next steps? Here is a summary

WHAT HAS BEEN DONE THIS MONTH

1.) The first bunch of donuts was delivered to Netflix

It feels like ages ago, but actually the first delivery of donuts was sent to Netflix on 1-Jun. Here is the original tweet.

2.) Trending has continued

The weekly trending on Twitter has continued:

7-Jun: #BeAHeroSaveFakingIt 14-Jun: “Bring Faking It Back” 24-Jun: “We Need Faking It” 1-Jul: “Revive Faking It”

Please note that trending has been moved from Tuesday to Friday.

Currently I have no records to show whether we made it into the “Trends” box on the Twitter homepage, and if so, in which countries. If you have information, please let me know. But independently from that, trending helps to maintain visible to MTV/Netflix/Hulu if done correctly (i.e. if tweets are properly tagged).

Here is more information on how to participate.

3.) Faking It has won another award

7-Jun: Faking It has won the “SpoilerTV Awards 2016: Favorite Cable/Streaming Network Comedy”: http://www.spoilertv.com/2016/06/spoilertv-awards-2016-winners-list.html

4.) The Dummy’s Guide to Saving MTV’s "Faking It” is available

13-Jun: Beta version of this blog goes online 24-Jun: First final release of this blog (guide) completed

5.) The Petition on Change.org is now presentable

22-Jun: Found the owner of the petition on Chage.org, started to negotiate a handover 29-Jun: The new petition letter on Chang.org is online -- and it is as awesome as we hoped it would be!

WHAT PEOPLE ARE CURRENTLY BUSY WITH

1.) Fighting for more awards

People are voting their asses off to make sure that Faking It wins a few TV Scoop Awards.

2.) Planning a community

Most of us are currently loosely connected through Twitter, and that is not an effective way to align activities and keep everybody up-to-date. 60 people said they would certainly or probably join a community of Faking It supporters. That is quite something, and it implies that we need some kind of structure and tool support. Both is currently under heavy discussion and people are testing various online services.

If you have got any experience with running an effective community,  please let me know.

THE NEXT STEPS

In short: We need a proper game plan, and a effective team to execute it. Creating both will take a while. Independently from whatever our approach will be, I can see the need for the following:

We need to assure a constant flow of feedback to MTV/Netflix/Hulu

We need to reinitiate the “donut delivery” to MTV/Netflix/Hulu

We need to get press coverage/attention of mainstream media

So why don’t you simply send a postcard to MTV, open a chat with Netflix and then binge-watch a few episodes on Hulu right now?

And later today, why don’t you have a close look at phone book or contact list, and if you spot anybody that is somehow connected to MTV/Netflix/Hulu or a newpaper/news site, get back to us.

Still some time or energy left? There are a few Open Issues that you can help me with.

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TV Scoop Awards 2016: Vote for Faking It [DONE]

More awards make the show easier to sell / multi-voting possible +++ Difficulty: low +++ Time required: 1 minute +++ Costs: none

Update 06-Jul-2016: Faking It won four categories (best comedy, best comedy actress, best comedy actor, most heartbreaking cancellation)! Well done, everybody!

E! Online lets readers vote for the TV Scoop Awards 2016 until 04-Jul-2016. There are 24 categories (see here), and every week a poll for some of them is open. This week’s poll is “best comedy of 2015/2016”. Of course we want Faking It to win this thing! So please go here and vote: http://www.eonline.com/news/773485/tv-scoop-awards-2016-vote-for-the-best-drama-and-comedy-now

Update 20-Jun-2016: The poll for favorite comedy actor and actress is available, and Katie, Rita and Gregg are nominated. We want these awards, too! Go and vote now: http://www.eonline.com/news/773982/tv-scoop-awards-2016-vote-for-your-favorite-comedy-actor-and-actress-now

Update 25-Jun-2016: The next poll has been made available: Most heartbreaking cancellation! Do I need to say more? Vote now! http://www.eonline.com/news/775361/tv-scoop-awards-2016-vote-for-the-most-heartbreaking-tv-goodbye-and-cancellation-now

All polls close on Monday, 04-Jul-2016 at 05:00 pm PDT / 05-Jul-2016, 02:00 am CEST.

As far as we understand it, the poll is not protected against multi-voting. Every time you load the page, you can vote. However, I am not sure if they count your vote again, or if reloading the page just gives you a chance to change your vote. (This is how I would have implemented a poll.) So just make sure that we are not missing any opportunities I recommend that you vote from a private (Google Chrome: incognito) browser window. Close the window, reopen it and vote again. Then I am rather confident that each of your votes will count.

We want these awards! Vote as often as you can!

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Who We Suggest to Address at Hulu and What To Do if You Know Better

Have insight into the internal structure of Hulu? Share it with us! +++ Difficulty: hard (requires inside knowledge or good research skills) +++ Time required: 2-?? minutes +++ Costs: none +++

Hulu is considered a viable alternative to MTV and Netflix by many, because they too have a history of picking up canceled TV shows. But in many cases that simply meant they put unaired episodes of a show into their catalog. This is not what we want. But Hulu is currently trying hard to catch up with Netflix, and I am aware of at least two shows that they picked up as “Hulu Originals” and produced new episodes for. And articles like this suggest that Hulu is not unfamiliar with “diversity”. So at third glance they are indeed an interesting contender.

All fandoms of canceled shows that I found were sending their requests to “Craig Erwich”, Senior Vice President at Hulu and “Head of Content”. Craig should be ultimately responsible for such decisions and certainly is not a bad choice. However, the name “Beatrice Springborn” came up in several news stories. Beatrice was a development manager at Pixar, is now “Head of Originals” at Hulu and as such responsible for their “programming portfolio”. If she were to recognize the potential of Faking It and to develop a vision for its future, we would be halfway there. My suggestion is therefore to focus on Beatrice.

Other interesting addressees at Hulu are “Lisa Holme” and “ Jenny Wall”. Lisa is “Head of Content Acquisition”, is working for Craig (like Beatrice) and said to be “aggressively pursuing content that’s designed to get people talking”. (Hey, that means “Faking It”, right?). Jenny, also a Senior Vice President, is “Head of Marketing”. Picking up a show that had an original mission and thus gaining the sympathy of a large, devoted target group sounds like something that can be used very well for marketing purposes. And Hulu needs good press.

Here are the contact details of all of the above:

Craig Erwich (Senior Vice President, Head of Content at Hulu) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/craig-erwich-3225718b E-mail: [email protected]

Beatrice Springborn (Head of Originals at Hulu) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/beespring Twitter: @beespring E-mail: [email protected] Corporate blog: http://blog.hulu.com/author/beatrice-springborn/

Lisa Holme (Vice President, Head of Content Acquisition at Hulu) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisa-holme-2581973 E-mail: [email protected] Corporate blog: http://blog.hulu.com/author/lisa-holme/

Jenny Wall (Senior Vice President, Head of Marketing at Hulu) LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennywall Twitter: @jennyrwall Instragram: jennywall E-mail: should be [email protected]

The postal address for all of the above is:

Hulu 2500 Broadway Santa Monica, CA 90404 United States

If you have insight into the organization of Hulu and can suggest other names, or if you know who we should focus on instead of Beatrice Springborn, please let us know.

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Send Donuts to Hulu

If we are nice to them, they should be nice to us +++ Difficulty: medium +++ Time necessary: 15-30 minutes +++ Costs: starting from ca. $20 for 12

As I written before: Roswell fans sent 3000 bottles of hot sauce to WB, and network executives said that the campaign contributed to the show’s survival. Now imagine a manager at Hulu who’s job is to gain new customers. If that is not a sign of a devoted fanbase which will follow you everywhere, then what is?

Send your letters and postcards to Hulu here: 1)

Beatrice Springborn (Head of Originals at Hulu) Hulu 2500 Broadway Santa Monica, CA 90404 United States

Donuts can be ordered online, e.g. from DK’s Donuts, Santa Monica, via GrubHub. DK did a nice job with donuts for MTV, so Hulu should be impressed, too.

If you send something (self-made or through whatever service), please let us know! We yet have to see the first example of donuts to Hulu.

1) If you wonder why I am suggesting Beatrice as contact or have insight into Hulu’s organization, please continue here.

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Binge-watch Faking It on Hulu

The easiest way to show Hulu how big the demand is +++ Difficulty: easy +++ Time required: x * (38 * 22 minutes) +++ Costs: none (for Hulu customers)

Admit it, you will be re-watching Faking It anyway! Instead of watching it from your DVR, stream it from Hulu. What better proof could they have to see the demand then from their own statistics?

Go on http://www.hulu.com/faking-it or grab your tablet or phone.

Please note: You do not actually have to pay attention. I.e. the show could be streamed into a browser tab in the background on your PC. But I do not recommend that you interrupt the streaming, as I am expecting Hulu to track this. I.e. there is (most likely) no point in repeatedly watching only the first minute. (At least this is how I would implement my statistics if I were Hulu. In case you know better -- maybe you are friends with an engineer at Hulu -- then please let us know.)

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Send Letters or Postcards (through Online Service) to Hulu

Tell Hulu why they need Faking It, send postcards online +++ Difficulty: easy-medium +++ Time required: Postcard: 5-10 minutes +++ Costs: starting from $1

Postcards and letters are are tangible and will end up on somebody’s desk, who is forced to look at it, even though only briefly. And they demonstrate your dedication much better than any online feedback would do. One of my favorite examples of a moving letter is still this one from @thekimbailey, but I am sure you all have got a lot of ideas, too.

Send your letters and postcards to Hulu here: 1)

Beatrice Springborn (Head of Originals at Hulu) Hulu 2500 Broadway Santa Monica, CA 90404 United States

You can use an online service to create and send your postcard. Out of the numerous similar services we recommend the following, which are cheap and deliver from the US:

PostcardsAnywhere.com (1 card = $1, has web and iPhone app)

amazingmail (1 card = $1.33 / only web / accepts PayPal)

As with the postcards for MTV and Netflix, @lazarusgirl has created nice templates that you can use (click to enlarge, then right-click (mobile: long click) to save image file):

(Here is @lazarusgirl‘s original blog post with more templates.)

1)If you wonder why I am suggesting Beatrice as contact or have insight into Hulu’s organization, please continue here.

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Ask Hulu to Pick Up Faking It as Hulu Original

Send a message to Hulu’s support, give them a call or reach out to their content team +++ Difficulty: easy +++ Time required: 5 minutes +++ Costs: none/phone call

Reaching out to Hulu’s support is easy: Go on https://help.hulu.com/contact, click on “Shows, Movies & Ads”, then either “Give us a call” or “Email recommended”:

But there is more!

On https://help.hulu.com/articles/59671835 they have published the address of their “content team”: [email protected] This sounds like a good reference that we should try out, too!

We found the e-mail addresses of the relevant managers at Hulu! You could send them something, too, but please no mail-bombing! Managers should IMHO receive articulate e-mails or rather postcards/letters or even donuts. In any case, the e-mail addresses are listed here.

In any case, if you talk to Hulu or receive an answer by e-mail, we would be glad to hear about it!