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This article is about the fan campaign to save the series "The Magnificent Seven"
"Internet users rescue 'Mag-Seven'"
By LYNN ELBER
The Times Herald-Record
January 1999
"The Magnificent Seven" can be found at the
intersection of the Old West and the new frontier – the Internet.
The CBS series, loosely based on the 1960 movie of the same name, is riding again in part
because of viewers who lobbied the network on its behalf. This time it was the mouse, not
the gun, that won the Western.
There's a certain irony that one of television's most
traditional genres should be rescued by technology. Fan Patti Kleckner, part of the effort to
save what she fondly calls "Mag-Seven," was grateful for the electronic firepower.
"It's impossible to judge the impact (of the campaign) on CBS' decision to return the show,
but from the fans' point of view it gave us a tremendous feeling of accomplishment," said
Kleckner, a systems engineer from suburban Chicago.
"We no longer felt like a single
letter to the network was going to go off into never-never land. It was a group effort we
couldn't accomplish without the Internet."
"The Magnificent Seven"
stakes out territory familiar to western buffs. Themes of loyalty,
vengeance and honor anchor the plots, and the dialogue has the requisite terseness and only a
few contemporary gaffes.
"How do you honor a man of peace? With bloodshed, or
forgiveness? You need to find forgiveness, ma'am," Josiah, played by Ron Perlman,
tells a mother bent on killing her son's murderer in the episode airing 9 p.m. tonight.
"You're wrong preacher," the woman (guest star Tyne Daly) replies. "I made a
promise to David. I will find forgiveness when I've kept my word. ... My kind of justice is the
apocalypse."
It also offers the kind of fairly bloody shoot-'em-ups that are
relatively rare on violence-conscious television these days.
Historical footnote: It was
violence that helped drive the popular 1960s western "The Wild West" from television
after Congress held hearings on the issue, according to "Les Brown's Encyclopedia of
Television."
"Magnificent Seven" gets the dusty, wind-blown look right
– it's filmed north of Los Angeles at Gene Autry's old studio, Melody Ranch, and at other
movie ranches clustered nearby.
Besides Perlman, the series features Michael Biehn,
Eric Close, Andrew Kavovit, Dale Midkiff, Anthony Starke, Rick Worthy and Laurie Holden.
Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen starred in the 1960 film version, based on Akira Kurosawa's "The Seven
Samurai," about seven men hired by a small village for protection against bandits.
In the TV adaptation, the gunfighters battle various evil people.
When it first debuted in
January 1998, the series made a strong showing and ranked No. 14. After pre-emptions because of
events including the Olympics, however, it had plummeted in the ratings and its future seemed
doubtful.
Then an eye-catching ad appeared last May in the trade paper Daily Variety: "
Wanted: The Magnificent Seven. Return Winning Show to Viewers."
The $1,000 cost was
covered by at least 100 fans from across the nation who had linked up via the Internet,
Kleckner said.
hey and many others already had flooded CBS with e-mail requests for the
show's survival.
"Once we decided to do the ad, everybody jumped up and said, 'I can
give you $5, I can give $10,' " Kleckner said.
One woman coordinated the money
collection, another used her credit card to secure the ad space, and Kleckner and a fourth
person wrote the ad.
Why the passion for the series?
"It's not a bunch of giddy
teen-agers drooling over men," Kleckner said then.
"The show is extremely
well-written, and the characters individually and collectively have a tremendous amount of
chemistry."
Although "Magnificent Seven" didn't make the CBS fall schedule,
it returned earlier this month to replace the sinking detective series "Buddy Faro"
on Fridays.
Thirteen new episodes are scheduled to run, the network said; its fate after
that is uncertain. "Magnificent Seven" hasn't been able to beat the competition
But the western represents a big improvement over "Buddy Faro" numbers.
Kleckner received a nice thank you from CBS for helping to lead the save-the-"Seven"
effort: She appeared as an extra in the Jan. 8 episode.
The experience also renewed her
faith in broadcast television and confirmed the power of the Net for her.
"As a
viewer, I felt I never could make my voice heard. I found this particular show brought me
back to network television because I had drifted away to cable and the (satellite) dish.
And the Internet let me make my thoughts known to the people who had the power."
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