Seymour: Fans Want More 'Quinn,' CBS Doesn't
(Tuesday, February 10 01:50 PM)
By Daniel Fienberg

LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) - The Coalition to Save Dr. Quinn may not pelt CBS with angry letters or e-mails anymore, but that doesn't mean that fans of "Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman" aren't still out there, nearly six years after the drama's cancellation.

For a long-deceased show about a frontier woman, "Dr. Quinn" still has a remarkably strong Internet following, loyal viewers anxious to at least get the show back into syndication or, in a perfect world, to get new episodes back on the air. That clamoring regularly reaches series star Jane Seymour.

"I hear it every day," she admits. "Every time I see [CBS Chairman] Leslie Moonves, he looks at me as if to say, 'Can you please tell these people to stop bugging me?' They just don't want to make anymore 'Dr. Quinns.' I'm very happy to make more 'Dr. Quinns.' I love that show and I'm very proud of it. [Co-star] Joe Lando and I are very close friends and we've both said the minute they ask us, we'd definitely go back and do it."

Seymour is pleased that the series, which earned 19 Emmy nominations (and wins for cinematography and hair styling) in its run, has been able to find a new audience of DVD. However, a certain bitterness comes into her voice when discussing CBS' decision to abandon the show.

"They wanted to get a different demographic," she sighs. "Their feeling was that the people watching 'Dr. Quinn' were too old to go out and decide what kind of toothpaste they wanted ... which car they were going to drive. They specifically wanted to target young males aged 25. That's their choice. They're looking for advertising dollars and I guess those people, they pay more."

While the network initially envisioned a series of possible "Dr. Quinn" telefilms, only two original movies have aired. As the current regime attempts to shift further and further from the Tiffany Network's reputation as the silver-haired home of shows like "Diagnosis Murder" and "Touched by an Angel," CBS may also be holding future "Dr. Quinn" projects in limbo.

"A lot of people would like to make 'Dr. Quinn,' but they can't because it's owned by CBS, so CBS can basically stop anybody else from making it," Seymour says.

Viewers desperate for a fix of the actress behind the medicine woman can see Seymour on NBC's "Law & Order: Special Victims Unit" on Tuesday, Feb. 10 at 10 p.m. ET.