EASTENDERS FANS REVERSE CANCELLATION ONCE AGAIN
By Larry Jaffee
ARLINGTON, Va. – EastEnders will remain on WETA, the public television station that serves Maryland, Virginia and Washington, D.C., through 2008, though it came very close to biting the dust. This marks the second time in two years that EastEnders fans reversed a decision to cancel the series by privately raising the money to cover the BBC's licence fee.The WETA fans put together more than $50,000 entirely on their own.
WETA never acknowledged on the air that it had decided to cancel the show; nor has it mentioned that it has been renewed – as was the case with WLIW in New York in January 2005.
The latest effort was spearheaded by Washington lawyer Michael Gordon, who contacted the Walford Gazette in June 2006 once he discovered WETA's plans to pull the plug on EastEnders. A core of fans materialised, and once again proved the power of the people.
Among them was Judy Hallett, a professor of classics specializing in Latin language and literature, who has taken over from Gordon as spokesperson of the successful effort.
"This is a very nice victory. Michael was very unsure that we were going to make it [the 15 January deadline to raise $50,000 in about six weeks]," Hallett told the Gazette about two months after the series was saved. "I had no doubt once I met the other EastEnders fans – true believers – even after [WETA] upped the ante [requesting the fans to come up with the second year's licence fee]. I knew we had to stay positive. We had nothing to lose," she said.
Hallett agrees that having Washington Post columnist John Kelly write about the fans' plight might have caused WETA to consider the cancellation decision a bit more seriously, but she also wonders if the reason Kelly paid attention to the story in the first place was because the journalist was interested in what she taught.
"Kelly wanted to know why a classics professor is an EastEnders fan," Hallett explained.
(At right is Kelly's second EastEnders-related column, reporting on the fans' victory. Newspapers and outlets in the U.K., including The Mirror, The Sun, Metro and Sky News, covered the story, and BBC Radio interviewed Gordon.)
Hallett says it's important for the fans to stay together and "energized," but she still doesn't know if WETA's management has learned at all from what has transpired. "WETA needs to be a better listener. They're so unaccountable," she adds.
Washington fan Mary Ellen Stroupe, who financially supported the campaign, praised the fan group's leadership as being "very professional and organized."
The end result was "fantastic. I thought it was well worth it to support the effort, although I think it was extortion [on WETA's part, especially to demand the second year]. The fans left no stone unturned. No phone call unmade."
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