Some comments on this:
Wow guys and gals. I'm gone for 4 days (went camping with my kids) and come back to 14 pages of added Mandate'ing!!!
SO first and foremost, the official results are in:
Save One Show: Gilmore and Veronica Get Fan Love in Record-Breaking Vote!
Wow. Just wow.
The results are in from our seventh annual Save One Show campaign, where you, the fans, vote for the one endangered TV series you want to save from extinction.
And the good news is—thanks to a never-before-seen SOS twist—you Gilmore Girls and Veronica Mars (and even Friday Night Lights) fans all have a reason to celebrate.
First, I have to tell you that we had a record-breaking 6 million votes this year, which is downright astounding. But not as astounding as the way in which those votes came in over the course of the two-week voting period.
Here's the play-by-play: For the first few days of SOS voting, CW fan favorites Veronica Mars and One Tree Hill were neck and neck, switching off between first and second place. Then, Veronica pulled ahead, steadily climbing and reaching nearly 40 percent of the votes, making it the clear winner for the next week and a half.
Then suddenly, in the last 24 hours of voting, you Gilmore fans must have put the pedal to the metal and rallied in all the right places, because the Girls pulled out of third place to come out on top—right before the Save One Show poll closed on Friday at midnight.
That said, thanks to these extraordinary voting circumstances, we’re going to do something we’ve never done before: give SOS love to two shows—both the winner, the CW's Gilmore Girls, and the very close runner-up, the CW's Veronica Mars.
As promised, I will be sending support letters to the powers that be at the C-Dub along with personal messages from you fans (feel free to post them in the comments section below).
Here are the official results (according to number of votes received) of the Save One Show poll:
1. Gilmore Girls: 2.2 million
2. Veronica Mars: 1.9 million
3. One Tree Hill: 950,802
4. Supernatural: 413,014
5. Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: 120,312
6. Crossing Jordan: 30,552
7. Friday Night Lights: 23,195 (six more scripts have been ordered)
8. How I Met Your Mother: 21,761
9. What About Brian: 14,003
10. Jericho: 13,328
11. The Class: 13,238
12. Medium: 11,811(six more scripts have been ordered)
13. Scrubs: 9,248
14. 30 Rock: 5,189 votes (already picked up by NBC)
15. Close to Home: 2,433
16. Six Degrees: 1,711
17. The Nine: 1,126
Veronica Mars executive producer Rob Thomas has this to say about the outpouring of fan support: "We're continually astounded by the fans' willingness to go grassroots to keep us around. More than ever, the letter-writing, vote-casting, plane-circling efforts of our fans may be just the push we need to make it back on the air."
(We weren’t able to receive a comment from the cast or crew of Gilmore Girls before press time—but I’m sure they are thrilled to know how much the fans still love them!)
Now, with my PR hat on for a moment, I smell a rat with the EOnline campaign.
1) Anyone noticed how 'shocked' they were with the result?
2) Why draw attention to 'the way in which the votes came in'? It's a vote - it happens, it ends.
3) 'VM ahead for a week and a half' - yes, it might have been but it didn't win - why emphatically state that?
4) 'Then in the last 24 hours' - again, why draw our attention to the short change in results? Like any vote, or auction for that matter anything with a deadline, there's bound to be much more activity in the last few hours, especially as results take time to process...
5) 'Extraordinary circumstances' - as we all know, this was an online poll much like any other - the circumstances were relatively straightforward, lots of people voted and stepped it up as the deadline neared. There were no 'crazy' circumstances.
6) give love to two shows - the winner and runner up - a good gesture, a nice way of getting double the fan base exposure or a way to ensure both parties (for whatever reason) are included?
7) Official results show a 300,000 gap - to me that is not tiny
Veronica Mars spokesman "gush gush gush get us back on the air wah wah" Gilmore Girls: "no comment in time for press deadline" - now this is the giveaway.
You're coordinating a poll and involving a range of shows so you plan to be available or get comments from the show PROs/Spokespeople in advance in order to get a quote for your release. Why hadn't they gotten a quote from GG? Noone was available at all? Not even from CW itself?
Now maybe there's a reason for all this. I suspect EOnline (in the middle of the voting) thought VM would romp home and they're shocked that it didn't. I suspect that they had already starting planning their save one show campaign, not before voting started, but as the voting neared a close - they thought they had their show and were starting to brainstorm ideas.
Then, shocker, while a LIVE VOTE is still running, the result changes, so much like sports commentators, they have to back foot a lot. Call GG press office (or don't, depending on how cynical you are) and no comment. Problem.
Call VM and tell them - what?
So, perfect solution, keep the campaign you'd already started on and include the GG one too - double bang for your buck, save work that would otherwise be wasted and save face too.
Call me cynical but I suspect that's what happened. I am not for one minute accusing EOnline of rigging the vote or spinning the result just trying to explain that perhaps they thought they knew their winner, then didn't and had to play catch-up.
Heidi's Soapbox, now with a new poll! Vote, vote, vote! Good times. Best times! 
