Dear NBC,

I am writing to help save Studio 60. I confess that I’ve been meaning to write your network for several weeks, and am only now making time because of rumors circulating this morning concerning NBC’s plans to cancel the show. I’ve been meaning to write your network for several weeks because Studio 60 is a great program. It’s clever, it’s incisive—it’s charming. I watch it every week, either with friends or with family (though I confess from time to time we TiVo it and fast forward through the commercials).

During my lunch break, I coach a high school debate club. It is my own pathetic attempt to combat the unremitting marginalization of intelligence in our culture. A task which, until now, NBC has not fully joined its counterparts in. It troubles me that NBC’s strategy seems to be that the only way to beat CBS is to become a little bit more like CBS. The show is clever, it’s incisive, it’s charming—it’s also right: All good things should flow into the boulevard.

I simply don’t have the tolerance for another tiresome criminal justice drama—CSI: Albuquerque, or Law & Order: Civil Action, I imagine—or another insipid game show. (Can we be honest for a moment? Deal or No Deal is just a guessing game. The bank is playing the odds. The contestants and the viewers are just making blind guesses. So exciting.) So if Studio 60 gets canceled, I’m turning off the TV.

Sincerely,
Chris Jones

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