Sunday, January 10 saw the return of hit American show Chuck for its third season. The show was created by Josh Shwartz (The OC, Gossip Girl) and Chris Fedak and premiered in 2007. It follows central protagonist Chuck, a sci-fi geek’s everyman, who works tech support in an electronics store and struggles to find a girlfriend. However everything changes for Chuck when his former college roommate, now a CIA agent, sends him an email containing all the government secrets into his head and sets him on a wild adventure.
This might seem like a ridiculous premise but Chuck has fast become NBC’s top rated hour long drama and an unlikely hit with critics. The season premier was watched by over 7.4 million people. However nine months ago things weren’t looking quite so rosy for Chuck. Despite its popularity NBC was considering cancelling the show at the end of its second season.
This prompted fans to launch the “Save Chuck” campaign which gained momentum on Facebook and Twitter. The real breakthrough of the campaign came when a fan, inspired by Subway’s product placement within the show, organised fans to purchase a footlong on the day of the season two finale in support of the shows renewal. This gained momentum and culminated in Zachary Levi (Chuck) leading a group of hundreds of fans to a subway restaurant in Birmingham, England. The campaign also saw over $17,000 donated to the American Heart Association on behalf of NBC in a fan effort entitled “Have a Heart, Renew Chuck”.
NBC bosses seem to have made a concentrated effort to boost Chuck’s ratings by airing two episodes back to back on Sunday, January 10 before allowing it to settle into its weekly timeslot the next day with an episode that ended on a cliffhanger that seems to have been designed to keep fans hooked. With this week’s cancellation of Jay Leno’s primetime show perhaps NBC will have be better able to cope with Chuck’s expensive budget. When asked whether the cancellation had lowered the bar for Chuck, NBC chairman Jeff Gaspin replied, “I wouldn’t say the bar’s lower, but we obviously have less choice at the moment, so he’s got a better shot.”
It would seem that Chuck fans are in for another uncertain year if ratings don’t at the very least hold steady.
Chuck airs on NBC in the US on Mondays and will soon return to TV3 here.
