There’s been no shortage of outrage over the cancellation of The Late Show With Stephen Colbert. But apart from one significant protest outside the late-night institution’s Ed Sullivan Theater, fans have mostly limited their action to the internet, from social media posts to an online petition. If you really want to save a TV show after it’s already been axed, especially one where millions of dollars are on the line, you need to do more. You need to send in the planes.
That’s exactly what the ingenious fans of The Wheel of Time have done. In response to the epic (and epically expensive) fantasy series being canceled by Prime Video in late May after just three seasons of a planned eight, a group of devoted viewers have organized a sprawling campaign to save the show, which has so far included flying sky banners over TV studios and erecting digital and physical billboards in cities ranging from New York to London to São Paulo.
The campaign, called SaveWOT, which has an accompanying fan-made website, has specific goals beyond expressing dismay at the cancellation. The organizers are “calling on Sony Pictures Television, which retains the series rights, to honor what was built by seeing the story through to the end — whether with Amazon or a new partner.”
“Sony helped bring this world to life,” one of the unnamed fan leaders shared in a press release sent by the campaign. “Now, we’re asking them to help finish it — not just for us, but for the people who created something extraordinary.”
To help raise awareness for the campaign among the public, and among the companies that they’d like to see pick up the show after being dropped by Amazon, SaveWOT hired a plane to fly a banner over Culver City, California, in the middle of the day on Tuesday, June 17. The undulating message, “SAVE THE WHEEL OF TIME – #SAVEWOT,” made its way over facilities owned not just by Sony Pictures Television, but Apple TV, Amazon MGM Studios and Netflix.
The funds to pay for the sky banner, as well as many of the billboards, have come from a wide swath of fans; organizers set up a GoFundMe campaign that raised $32,800 from 843 donations. And that’s not all: a group of Brazilian fans, who reportedly couldn’t donate to the American GoFundMe campaign, put together their own fundraising effort for a separate Times Square billboard that included the campaign’s website, a Brazilian flag and the text, “The wheel must keep on turning!”
On July 17, SaveWOT hit a major milestone: 200,000 signatures on their online petition. But besides rallying more fans of the show, including many who may not have previously known that it was canceled, as Amazon made the announcement quietly on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend, have these industrious campaigners actually made any headway with their goals?
“The Wheel of Time” vs. Too Big to Fail TV
The most inventive and startling show of the year is being drowned out by conversation-dominating snoozefestsNo streamers have announced plans to pick up the show yet, but The Wheel of Time creator and showrunner Rafe Judkins expressed a sliver of hope in an Instagram post acknowledging the cancellation.
“Will the Wheel of Time get to [continue] with another network and finish the story? Sadly, it’s not something that happens often. But it does happen,” he wrote on June 6. “In fact, one of the reasons we first chose Amazon as a home for the show was because they were in the midst of picking up The Expanse after SYFY cancelled it.”
That science-fiction show, which was also based on a series of books and cancelled after three seasons, was saved by Amazon and continued for three more seasons after a group of outraged fans — get this — flew their own sky banner over Amazon Studios in 2018.
However, that campaign was successful despite only garnering around 139,000 signatures in an online petition. So far, SaveWOT’s petition is already up to 213,629 — and they’re not stopping anytime soon.
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