For those of you who are new to the Great 8 Mandate Thread, Welcome! The energy that everyone is feeling is almost tangible to me and I know that a lot of you are wondering what you can do to help try to convince the CW to uncancel Gilmore Girls. This post is about voicemail, email and snail mail. Here’s what you can do:
1) SEND SNAIL MAIL.
Handwriting is fine if your penmanship is good because it's such a personal form of communication. Otherwise, typing and signing and mailing by snail mail is the single BEST way to contact them. They expect to be deluged with email and voicemail and that helps as far as it goes, but the amount of effort that it takes to write/type a letter on paper and send it in an envelope always makes a bigger impression than email and voicemail and the like. There's a rule of thumb that floats about in various media industries that every individual piece of correspondence that's written on paper and delivered by mail represents the sentiments of at least 7 other people. So if literally tens of thousands of pieces of snailmail are received, that's going to make a MUCH bigger impact on them than electronic forms of mail.
There are various addresses you can send your correspondence to, which are posted on page 1 of the thread, but IMO, the person who has the most potential to help is IMO, the CW’s President of Entertainment, Dawn Ostroff, who is the nexus of all network realities at the CW. She can be contacted at the following address:
Ms. Dawn Ostroff, President of Entertainment
The CW Television Network
4000 Warner Blvd., Bldg 168
Burbank, CA 91522-0002
Now, I have a few tips/suggestions to help make you make your letters as effective as possible:
* BE BRIEF. Keep the length of your letter down to ONE side of ONE page, double space it and use a simple 10 or 12-point Times font. (Arial font is hard to read.) If your letter goes on for only one or two more lines beyond a page, don't sweat it, but the longer the letter is, the less of it they'll read before they move on to the next one. Double-spacing is the exact opposite in print as it is online -- it's much easier to read on paper than single spacing is -- and again, the need to be as brief as possible will make you more concise and to-the-point. Conversely, single spacing will make you look a little wacky, especially if you go on for more than one page.
* BE BRIEF (AGAIN): If you must single-space to get all you want on one page, skip a line between each paragraph as that will help maximize readability. But definitely do not go over one side of one page at all. And I'd suggest if you're going to do single-spacing your message should take up no more than 2/3rds of the page, not counting your signature.
* BE POLITE. I know that there's a lot of anger and sadness going on right now, but don't unleash any of it on the person that you're writing too (s/he may not even be responsible for what's happening to the show). Just tell them why you like the show, the actors, the stories, how it affects you, why you think it should continue, etc. If your letter is all tone and no substance, they won't read it. Or maybe the first person who reads it won't pass it on to someone else at the studio or directly involved with the show.
* BE POLITE (Again): DON'T mention the salary issues because it's not our place to address them. Some form of "I hope that you are still looking for a solution that results in the show going on" would IMO be a great way to sidestep that issue.
2) If you are going to send an email or leave a voice mail, that’s okay as a reinforcement of your Snail Mail, but DO NOT AS AN INDIVIDUAL FLOOD ANY INDIVIDUAL AT THE CW OR WARNERS WITH MULTIPLE VOICE MAILS OR E-MAILS. It will do the exact opposite of what you intend because it's considered spamming and more or less harrassment.[/i] They want to hear from as many individuals as possible. And Snail Mail is a better way to do it than either email or voicemail because it's a tangible representation of the viewership's sentiments while electronic forms of correspondence are more abstract (because you can't hold them in your hands) and therefore easy to forget. And remember to BE POLITE AND POSITIVE. They already know that we're all upset, we just need to reinforce our presence in terms of the sheer number of individuals contacting them.
3) If you send mail to anyone other than Dawn Ostroff (ie: Lauren and Alexis), I’m sure as heck not gonna try to discourage you. Just please make contacting Ms. Ostroff your first priority. If she gets the mail, she is sure to contact everybody else involved, including her bosses at the CW’s corporate parent companies, CBS/Paramount and Warner Brothers, as well as the actors. (Or else they’ll hear it through the grapevine.)
4) And send them daisies.
-- Rob
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Season 8: Because Sheryl Crowe wrote that Every Day Is a Winding Road, not Every Day is a Full Circle.
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