savementalist project blog

Attention all Mentalistas!

There will be a special trending time on Wednesday, February 18th @ 7PM EST (an hour before the finale airs) to let The Mentalist cast & crew know how much we’ve appreciated & enjoyed these past seven years!

Please try to schedule some tweets if you won’t be around during this time, but if you will be - join the party!

A few things to note:

We want this trend to be HUGE! Our cast & crew deserve it - so spread the word on twitter, tumblr, instagram, or any social media outlet you can think of.

Tweets from private accounts (protected tweets) do not count towards trending! Please unblock your account for the trending hour or use a different, non-private account to trend.

Be sure to read our guidelines to brush up on the ins & outs of tweeting a hashtag (found above).

Remember, you can schedule tweets on tweetdeck, twuffer.com, or futuretweets.com.

I'm sure you all already know this, but it's People's Choice Awards season, and that means it's time to bring back all of that energy we had whilst saving our show! Our fandom has accomplished a great many things this year - let's end it with a trophy at the PCA's! We are determined to win, especially because this is our show's last season. 

— Where can we vote?

The official PCA twitter has announced that this year they will NOT be doing Twitter votes. There are presumably three places where one can vote:

The Official PCA Website (x)

The Official PCA Facebook App (x)

The Official PCA iOS/Android Apps (iOS & Android) *to be updated

*If you do not have a smartphone, but you have a phone that can go on the Internet, you can still vote via the mobile site. Trust me - I've done it in pre-iPhone days. 

— How often can we vote? 

As always, we can vote as many times as we want. Vote on your way to work/school, whenever you have a few seconds to spare, all day every day! Because we are a smaller fandom compared to others, it's extremely important that if we're dead set on taking home the trophy this time, we vote EVERY chance we get.

— Voting Hours

We have organised five Voting Hours spread throughout the day so that every timezone has a chance to participate. During Voting Hours, we will be voting for one hour nonstop on the Facebook app (or anywhere that is most convenient for you). The purpose of this is to minimise distractions from each other and our various forms of social media - if everyone is voting together during voting hour, we won't be tempted to check Twitter because ideally, no one would be there. 

 Voting Hours:

5am EST 11am EST 3pm EST 6pm EST 10pm EST

— WHY VOTE?!

Well, aside from the obvious reasons, we are giving you an added incentive to vote! (Can you tell we really want to win this year?) 

First of all: SaveTM will be releasing batches of little thank you's in various forms throughout the voting period to keep the energy up and give you encouragement! Stay posted, as we'll tweet about them!

!!!!!!WIN A MENTALIST-THEMED CARE PACKAGE OR A VIP TOUR!!!!!!!

YES that's right! We told you we weren't kidding around this year, didn't we? We will be finding all voters who tweet that they're voting, and randomly generate a few lucky winners to receive a The Mentalist-themed care package filled with goodies. ANNNNNNNNNNND: ONE EXTREMELY FORTUNATE MENTALISTA WILL WIN A VIP TOUR AT WARNER BROS!!!

I hope that we've inspired you to start voting! We look forward to seeing all you lovely Mentalist fans once the battle begins! And as always, feel free to hit us up with any questions via Twitter, Tumblr, or email!

Thank you to everyone who gave us your input for days/times to have our trending time! Here is some more information:

— What is it? (info for new Mentalistas): Trending Time is an hour, once a week, where Mentalistas dedicate a whole hour to tweet a specific trending topic about the show (which is determinated the day before) in order to let CBS / Warner / other know something.

— When is it? We will trend every Monday at 3PM EST, starting on Monday September 8th. If you can’t make it at this time/day, feel free to schedule some tweets ~ you can do it through Tweetdeck or Future Tweets.

— Schedule: We will dedicate a whole month to each topic (*except when we trend for Currie because it would be annoying for the writers). This is our schedule:

September 8th: We will trend to let the writers know we want Walter Mashburn (played by Currie Graham) back to The Mentalist for one episode (tomorrow we will announce the trending topic).

September 15th / 22nd / 29th & October 6th: We will trend to let CBS and Warner Bros know how many of us want them to include The Mentalist bloopers in DVDs.

October 13th / 20th / 27th & November 3rd: We will trend to let CBS and Warner Bros know we want a photoshoot for Season 7.

November 10th / 17th / 24th & December 1st: We will trend to let Ellen DeGeneres know we want Robin Tunney to go on her show.

Hey Mentalistas! First of all, thank you to everyone who’s participating in the Mentalist Marathon! As a lot of you already know, we only got The Mentalist bloopers of Season 1. We are aware that there are bloopers of the rest of seasons but CBS and Warner Brothers didn’t seem to want them for the DVDs. According to this, we decided to bring the Trending Time back in order to show them how many of us want The Mentalist bloopers. We would trend once a week to make it easier for everyone. If you would like to participate:

Please let us know what day and time would be best for you to trend, by voting here: http://poll.fm/tp/4xh1v

Please do this as soon as possible! We will try to finalize the days and times, & post all other info by Friday September 5th, so we can start next week :) 

Thank you to everyone who gave us your input for days/times to have our marathon! Here is some more information:

What is it? Mentalist Marathon is an hour, 4 days a week, where Mentalistas can watch episodes of The Mentalist together, starting with the pilot! This will go on until January 2015, when season 7 is expected to air. We will be livetweeting each episode on twitter (@savementalist), but feel free to liveblog on tumblr, or watch on your own too.

When is it? We will marathon one episode every Thursday, Friday, Saturday & Sunday at 3 PM EST. If you can't make it at this time, feel free to watch and livetweet at a time thats good for you. We will start next Thursday, May 22nd, with episode 1x01

Where can I watch episodes? you can download them, watch them on DVD if you have them, or use one of these sites to stream them.

                http://www.primewire.ag/tv-5223-The-Mentalist

                http://www.cokeandpopcorn.ch/watch-the-mentalist-online.php

                http://www.free-tv-video-online.me/internet/the_mentalist/

                http://shows4u.info/show/the-mentalist

Hey Mentalistas! First of all, we would just like to say great job participating in HIAHIAC, and if you haven't heard, The Mentalist has been renewed for a seventh season by CBS! Season 7 will most likely start in January of 2015. A lot of you have been talking about having a Twitter Rewatch of the series from the pilot (where we all watch together and livetweet the episodes) to help us get through the long hiatus, so we decided to make this our new project :)

In order to watch all episodes in seasons 1-6 by the time season 7 premieres, we would have to watch 4 episodes per week.

If you would like to participate:

Please let us know what days would be best for you to rewatch, by choosing your top 4 days here: https://polldaddy.com/poll/8049790/

Also, please let us know if you would like to rewatch during the same time we had trending hour (3 PM EST) or at a different time, by voting here: http://poll.fm/4sj9t

As you have all probably heard, Warner Brothers is shopping for other networks to sell The Mentalist to, since CBS has not yet renewed it. 

How can we help them? By writing emails to these networks and giving them reasons why adopting TM would be beneficial to them!

Below we have listed a number of emails for prospective networks, & a template with general guidelines to help you while writing your emails.

A few things:

Use as many emails as you would like, but please try to use at least one school/professional email if possible (it adds credibility)

Please don’t copy the template exactly, just use it as a guideline. We want our emails to be unique, not sound like carbon copies.

Feel free to add anything you think we left out (but please keep it professional).

Email Template:

To Whom it may concern: 

  My name is (name), and I am (age), from (location). 

  Things to talk about:

The Mentalist frequently wins the Sunday 10 PM timeslot in number of overall viewers, and generates more ad revenue than other shows on the same network (Hostages, Intelligence, Blue Bloods, The Good Wife, and Hawaii 5O) ~ adopting it would be a cost effective decision.

The Mentalist is consistently the top 25 DVR + 7, increasing in both 18-49 demo and total viewership.

The Mentalist has a consistent multi-million loyal audience viewership on Sunday night, who watch even despite delays due to sports.

The Mentalist is the number one most watched TV drama worldwide with a 58 million worldwide viewership, and massive international popularity.

The Mentalist is also one of the few critically liked procedural dramas, and has been nominated for awards, including a recent PCA nom for “tv crime drama”).

The Mentalist’s loyal fanbase who will continue to watch even if it is moved to another network.

The positive reception to TM 2.0 & the conclusion of the RJ story arc; how fans would like to see more of the new characters/FBI setting.

The large and loyal fan base; another season would mean more syndication money when it eventually does end. Fans will continue to watch reruns.

What NOT to say:

DON’T say rude/abusive things about CBS. Don’t complain that CBS “hates TM”, or complain about them moving it to the Sunday timeslot. Please only state facts.

DON’T say rude/abusive things about other CBS shows (i.e The Good Wife, Elementary).

~Doing these things does nothing but make us look ungrateful.

List of network email addresses:

TNT:

[email protected]

[email protected] 

ABC:

[email protected]

http://abc.go.com/feedback 

ION:

http://iontelevision.com/contact (select ‘programming’)

NBC:

[email protected]

[email protected]

http://www.nbc.com/contact/general (select ‘other’)

FOX:

[email protected]

USA Network:

[email protected]

The CW:

[email protected]

WGN America:

[email protected]

As you all probably know, SaveMentalist has been organising Tweetathons and we've been trending every single day! Now that most people have tapped into their inner crazy "save the show" mentality, we're introducing our next project, which takes the campaign straight to the CBS HQ. We want to be heard, folks!

— What is "Hop into a Hug in a Cup"?

As the name (credit to a fellow Mentalista of ours) suggests, we'll be sending packages filled with a variety of tea & frog-related items to Nina Tassler, who is the Head of CBS's Entertainment Division. Fans of shows in the past have done this before, and now it's our turn to show the executives just how much we love the show, and how many of us are out there! 

Ms. Nina Tassler President, CBS Entertainment CBS Entertainment 7800 Beverly Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90039-2112

— What kinds of things are we sending exactly?

"A frog? This makes everything better doesn't it?" — Teresa Lisbon (1x01 Pilot)

stuffed frogs / frog toys *

origami frogs with messages written on them

frog-shaped tea bags

"Tea? It's like a hug in a cup." — Patrick Jane (3x04 Red Carpet Treatment)

boxes of tea *

plastic toy tea sets / other tea-related toys *

empty decorated tea containers filled with little frog trinkets, tea packets, etc.

* We require that you send at least one item with a * after. Why? Because we're trying to make a statement to CBS. All the other items could be seen as "useless trash", as much meaning as they hold for us. They can be handed off to interns to throw away, and that's not what we want to happen. Toys and tea are solid items that CBS can donate to charities after they receive them, so we'd be killing two birds with one stone — making our statement and giving our show some positive publicity. With that in mind, please make sure your toys are in acceptable donating condition, and tea must be sealed and untampered with in its ORIGINAL packaging. 

— But I'm an international fan! How does this work?

International fans can send frogs and tea to CBS via Amazon, Ebay, or Etsy. Simply look for an item you want to send from any of those sites via a USA-based seller, choose a "gift" option (wording will vary depending on site) and send it directly to CBS! You won't have to pay customs or international shipping fees. An added bonus is that almost all gift options will allow you to attach a personal message.

If you don't mind international shipping fees, and have experiencing sending packages by yourself to the US, then feel free to send your own package! You can even give your frog/tea gifts a little cultural twist to keep things interesting. Keep in mind the date you should send your package by in the deadlines section below.

NOTE TO INTERNATIONALS: There are four American Mentalistas who have each been assigned a group of countries. We will be making a huge load of paper frogs and putting them in empty (hopefully) decorated tea containers, along with our own little stuffed frogs or trinkets, and sending them to CBS. If you are an international fan OR an underaged American with no means of sending a personal message in the form of a paper frog and would like to, please download >this file< with special instructions. 

— Dates and Deadlines

April 08: International participants send out packages. (PLEASE NOTE: If you're an international BUT you're sending a package to CBS via a US seller, you should order your items and have the seller send it out by the US deadline, which is April 15.) April 10: Deadline for international participants to send information to assigned Americans re: paper frog messages. April 15: U.S. participants send out packages. April 22-29: All packages hopefully arrive around this time. ... May 14: Upfronts

— Important Guidelines (PLEASE READ!)

<We ask that if you are participating in this project, to put the words "Hop into a Hug in a Cup" somewhere in your package to CBS. This is so that the campaign appears uniform and they are aware all these packages are from one campaign.

Please contact us in some way to let us know you've sent a package! We'd like to keep a tab on the numbers.

Please keep your messages personal, unique, and smart! ;) Do not undermine or disrespect the decisions that Nina Tassler has made in her business. Do not say things like, "the move to Sunday night was horrible", "football destroyed us", etc. These packages are addressed directly to her, and all these decisions are approved by her. If you give derogatory or sly comments, you are undermining her ability to run her corporation, and we don't want her to get a bad impression of us as a fandom. 

Remember we are sending MESSAGES, not letters. It is quite likely that no one will read hundreds of multi-page letters, so it's important to keep your message extremely short: Short enough to fit on a paper frog or inside a tea box! The stars of this project are the items! There is a separate project in the works for writing formal letters, so no worries. :)

Some examples of messages: Your favourite things about The Mentalist, what The Mentalist has done for you, things you've learned from The Mentalist, your favourite quotes, etc! And of course, reasons YOU would love another season.

Be sure to say thank you! 

Questions, or need additional clarification? Hit us up on Twitter, here, or via email! And remember — tell your family and friends about this and get them in on it!