Now it's baby booties

Ben Silverman is probably hating Nina Tassler these days.

Not because he's the chief programmer of NBC and she's the chief programmer of CBS. But Tassler is at least partly, albeit indirectly, responsible for the fact that Silverman is being buried under baby booties.

Silverman has angered "Las Vegas" fans because he canceled the show. Not just because he canceled it, but because the final episode was no finale at all — it ended on a cliffhanger involving Delinda Deline (Molly Sims) being pregnant.

Which precipitated "The Save Las Vegas/Operation: Baby Booties" campaign. Which was in no small part inspired by what happened at CBS last year.

After Tassler canceled "Jericho" last May, the network was inundated with peanuts. Fans unhappy about the cancellation sent thousands of pounds of peanuts to Tassler and Co., a reference to the first-season finale (another cliffhanger). In the middle of a battle, one of the characters replied, "Nuts!" to a call for surrender — and a fan protest was born.

More than that, it worked. Tassler brought the show back from cancellation, ordering seven additional episodes. (Four have aired to date.)

Predictably, that has led to this effort to save "Las Vegas." It's not like you needed a crystal ball to foresee the future — yours truly wrote that this sort of thing would happen when "Jericho" got the reprieve:

It's fantastic that a well-organized campaign by impassioned fans of a low-rated television show has had such an impact. Far too often, networks seem to ignore the very people they're trying to attract. But ... this will ramp up the save-our-show efforts for every series that gets canceled. And, make no mistake about it, in this age of the Internet, every single show has passionate fans who try to organize to reverse cancellations. And not every show deserves to be saved.

At the risk of making anyone send me baby booties, "Las Vegas" isn't a show worth saving. After five years, it has run its course. (And that's being as charitable as possible.)

As you've read here before, networks should respect their viewers enough not to leave them cliff-hanging forever. Some sort of wrap-up episode is no more than loyal "Las Vegas" viewers deserve.

But another season of an OK show with fading ratings is too much to ask.

According to the Web site spearheading the drive — lasvegas-theseries.com — 67 cases of booties (2,745 pairs) had been shipped to NBC as of March 3. And that's not counting how many have been sent independent of the Web site.

Let's hope they get a final "Las Vegas" episode out of it.