M:M A Show for Respect

By Richard Thompson
Mediaverse
(updated/revised)

On a recent Wednesday, an estimated 8.87 million people watched CBS’s Criminal Minds, ranking the hour-long, FBI crime drama among the top 10 network TV shows for that week, according to Nielsen Media Research. So, how much credit—or better yet, respect—should one fan be given for that?

Jill Davidson, 47, is on course to find out.

Davidson is a divorced mom, a sales representative and a New Yorker living in Cordova, Tenn. and feeling displaced. She is also the owner of criminalmindsfanatic.blogspot.com, widely-regarded in the media as the show’s No. 1 fan blog, a remarkable feat considering the immensity of fandom. Yet, as the one year anniversary of her blog arrived last week, Davidson professed to some exhaustion with the seemingly impolite idiosyncrasies that come with popularity.

The entertainment press, for instance.

Davidson has been fielding scoop-hungry press calls ever since last month when Criminal Minds executive producer, Ed Bernero, called her home—she has his number on speed dial—and gave her an exclusive, and critical, statement for the blog about the abrupt departure of well-liked actor Mandy Patinkin from the show. Davidson posted it. Fans responded. CBS released its official statement days later; Patinkin left citing “creative differences.”

“When (Bernero) writes something, they believe it,” said Davidson, who got hooked on the show last year. “He tells us the good news and the bad news and he tells us before the network.”

Indeed, he gave Davidson another exclusive release about the hire of Joe Mantegna as Patinkin’s replacement for the third season. Davidson posted it. CBS’s official statement came days later again. The press began calling her but more importantly, Davidson said CBS “hasn’t returned one of my E-mails in the last month. Do I know the reason? No.”

She doesn't believe CBS is retaliating because of the exclusives.

“The Alphabets (Davidson’s name for CBS and ABC Studios, which produces the show) are extremely supportive of the show but they don’t show me the respect that I show the show,” said Davidson. “The shelf life (of her blog) will be dependent on how much of that I am willing to stomach. I’ve never had anyone from either of the Alphabets to ever say, ‘Thank you.’”

That’s a proverbial warning shot.

A CBS spokesperson said the network "embraces" fan blogs all the time, noting the strong fan response to the once-cancelled series, Jericho, as a reason for its return. (One reporter has dubbed it "The 'Jericho' Effect.")

The spokesperson said the issue with Davidson has less to do with her and her blog than it does the fact that CBS had given other entertainment media a "head's up" that the Mantegna announcement was in the works. In return, those outlets held off publishing the story as a professional courtesy but Bernero's Mantegna exclusive on Davidson's blog rubbed them the wrong way.

Bernero's announcement would have been fine if he had just coordinated it. "We just need to be in coordination so that everyone knows what everyone else is doing," the spokesperson said.

In the Washington Post's TV Column, published Monday, Bernero admits he made a mistake giving Davidson that exclusive.

"That's the one I'm sorry about," Bernero says of the posting, which he tells the TV Column he had, in fact, given to the blog, handing it a scoop. "I got so excited about having good news, I completely forgot there are people whose job it is to make those announcements," he says. "It was disrespectful of all the people . . . whose jobs it is to do that."

Nevertheless, the whole drama behind the drama is symptomatic of the times for entertainment media, where fans, like Davidson, are given the kind of access to show information that traditionally had been the province of professional TV critics.

In a recent posting on MediaPost’s TV Watch, Wayne Friedman described it as “a war” because TV writers are no longer enough for marketing executives, who view the fan sites as a “way of sending out exceptionally positive messages that zealously recruit converts to the cause of a new show.”

That shift has led to some testy exchanges between TV critics and overprotective fans. After Bernero’s Mantegna exclusive on her blog, Davidson left a “slew of angry midnight voice messages” on several office phones at the Hollywood Reporter, according to HR’s Nellie Andreeva. In a column, Andreeva said Davidson felt she didn’t get enough credit in the entertainment trade newspaper's story on Mantegna. (In an interview, Davidson called the slight annoying and “petty craft.”)

“As trade journalists covering television, do we have to fear criticizing shows because their fans can get offended and, being Web-savvy, can track us down and come after us?” Andreeva wrote. According to Davidson's blog, she called Andreeva at home. The emergency contact number that Andreeva uses on her external voice mail is her cell phone.

Andreeva wrote: “Yes, the love of its fans is a show's biggest asset, and the Internet has made it easier for that fan base to stay close together and grow. But it also has made the small step from love to obsession a hell of a lot easier.”

Is Davidson obsessed?

Davidson has two Criminal Minds’ Yahoo! groups and a Website (criminalmindsfanatic.net). She has moderators for the Yahoo! groups and 30 moderators from all over the world who monitor the Website’s messageboards. Yet, it’s the blog that consumes most of her time; it averages 1,800 page views a day, according to its sitemeter.

Even though she has a co-blog moderator that lives in Nova Scotia, Canada, Davidson estimates that she fields between 2,000 and 10,000 E-mails a day from fans, many of them just discovering the show. Criminal Minds first aired in 2005; it revolves around an elite team of FBI profilers who analyze the country's most twisted criminal minds, anticipating their next moves before they strike again, according to CBS.

“I’m the one who gets the E-mails,” said Davidson, who is very much a respectful clearinghouse. In addition to passing on E-mails, she forwards gifts and packages sent by fans for the show’s stars at her own expense.

She paid her own way when she visited the Criminal Minds’ set in California for the first time earlier this year. “I get nothing. There are no perks,” said Davidson, adding that the show participates on the site “in small ways.” She gets access to screen caps, though she still buys some pictures. She gets feedback from the show’s writers, producers and actors.

While CBS sends her media releases, Davidson calls Bernero’s secretary if she needs something. He considers her “to be a safe liaison between the show and its fans,” said Davidson, who has a strong respect for Bernero as well as ABC Studios. “These people are incredible.”

“You have to be able to separate the production company from the network,” she said.

“CBS considers me to be nothing more than a lady with a blog.”

The irony, though, is that Davidson views herself with the same simplicity—with a caveat, of course: “I am a lady with a blog who can reach over a quarter of a million people and whether they are interested in what I have to say when I say it who can tell—but (what she says) is picked up by somebody.”

In other words, Criminal Minds will survive without Patinkin when the new season begins next month, but what might happen if Davidson abruptly quit her role?

Whether she’s serious or not, she is testing her own importance, airing her views in the media, a decision she might come to regret. To echo Wayne Friedman: “TV networks only really care what brings in the biggest buzz to get the biggest buck. You can put that in writing.”

Or post it on any Criminal Minds blog.
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AN EDITOR'S NOTE: The blog format enables Mediaverse to make revisions [typically grammar and spelling] within the first few hours of a posting. Thus, the revision tag. In this case, this story posted Sunday, Aug. 19 and CBS had not yet responded to Mediaverse's inquiry. Today, the network did. Also, there were other relevant public statements that were published elsewhere today that shed clarity on the relationship between Criminal Minds and Jill Davidson's show exclusives. For those reasons, this story has been updated.