Background
I am a webmaster for a still tenacious and at one time very active international fan community that organized to save a television series Prey that aired in 1998 on abc. The US/Canada campaign was successful in persuading abc to air the remaining 5 episodes when the network put Prey on hiatus after episode 8. However the series ended with a terrible cliff-hanger in which Tom Daniels, a member of a newly evolved species of man, played by actor Adam Storke, was trapped in a cage. The campaign gained momentum as Prey aired around the world, causing a now international group of fans to send hundreds of keys to the networks in protest to let Tom out of the cage! The campaign was mentioned in the LA Times, the Indianapolis Star-News, Biography Magazine, and on the Sci-Fi Channel as well as numerous other places.
In 2001 the Sci-Fi Channel announced that they were giving Prey fans a wink. In a cross-over episode that aired on September 29, 2001, Invisible Man's Vincent Ventresca who played Dr. Ed Tate in Prey comes across a character played by Storke in similar circumstances and has the opportunity to set him free. Prey's creator William Schmidt even penned a two-hour sequel Tom's Story to pitch to the networks. This type of interactivity between fans and creative team and networks is unprecedented and has only come about because world-wide grass-roots communities understood how to leverage the power of the Internet.
Not only have our message boards have been visited by the Prey-Makers, but according to intermittent statistics provided by Hypermart, we have gotten well over a million hits (but who's counting?) ;) Fans have gathered to meet face to face all over the world, and in 2000 converged upon Burbank CA to meet one another and Prey's creator William Schmidt at the Agamemcon 2000 Sci-Fi Convention. They have chatted on-line with actor Adam Storke and with Senior Vice-President Thomas Vitale of the Sci-Fi Channel. They have gone through Y2K, 9-11, and the war on Iraq although sadly the latter took a toll on our international membership. They have thrived and grown their communication skills and technical skills. Some have even found the strength and confidence to take a few personal life-changing steps through the support and the successes of our grass-roots community. And in the end they have survived the demise of any hope of the series' renewal and have become simply a bunch of "regulars," people who enjoy one another's company - much like the gang of the old television show Cheers, or in real life, much like the patrons of Shellie's Cafe in the little town of Lafayette, Indiana, where I live, where the same people have lunch together every day or at least drop in from time to time, glad to find us still here.
A PowerPoint Presentation of the Prey community's extraordinary on-line experience is available to those with Internet Explorer 5 and T1 connections or faster. An expanded CD version which also features the international fans' voices is available free upon request.