Groening Does It His Way (From SciFi Wire)

I got this from the SciFi Channel's SciFi Wire (http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire) and thought some of you folks might like to see it...

Groening Does It His Way

Futurama creator Matt Groening lashed out at Fox executives after the network moved his new animated SF series from Sunday to Tuesday nights. The New York Daily News reports that Groening feels the move was made in part because he refused to look at notes from the higher-ups at Fox who suggested changes he should make to the show.

"The executives like to think they have something to do with the success of their shows, and with The Simpsons and Futurama they can't say that," Groening said of his two popular TV series. "The shows are done with complete independence, and I think that grates on their nerves."

After drawing in an estimated 19 million viewers during its Sunday, March 28, debut, Futurama has since lost a lot of ground. The second Sunday night show was only seen by 14.2 million people, while the third episode--and the first to air on a Tuesday--attracted just 8.8 million TV watchers.

Frodo

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On Sat, 10 Apr 1999 17:33:53 GMT, [email] (Frodo) wrote:

I don't like the way this is looking. I seriously believe Fox is trying to kill shows these days.

In article , [email] says...

Yep, unless it's cheap, low-grade shows like the standard "captured on tape" shows, or shows a lot of skin. Then, it's the FOX executives favorite shows.

I guess some shows are smarter than those executives want. I really wonder how X-Files and the Simpsons survived under such brain-dead management.

[And here's another question. Where do these "8 million" or "14 million" measurements come from. I sure haven't been asked if I watched it.]

P. Sanders psanders @ mindspring . com

[email] (P. Sanders) wrote:

It's a company called Nielsen who do this - they have some sort of set-top box installed in a few thousand demographically selected homes, and extrapolate from there. The problem is that they allow no insight into, for instance, how they select box recipients.

As an example, in my old homeland Sweden, there is a youth-oriented cable channel called ZTV (which, keeping this close to on topic, show The Simpsons every weeknight) and their ratings are about as close to zero as you can get - yet almost everyone I know watches it. Now, I guess it could be argued that one person's circle of aquaintances don't add up to even 0.1% of a 9 Million population, but the channel was being discussed in the media constantly, etc.

Evidently there was a demographic that they weren't catching - since Sweden has a bit of a housing problem, most younger people are fairly transient, living in second-hand apartments and moving often. They're not about to be candidates for a Nielsen box (yes, they do the ratings over there too), no matter how significant and real they are as a demographic.

So, until someone comes up with a way of measuring _all_ the TVs turned to a channel (which would lead to serious privacy concerns), I would take all Nielsen figures with about a spoonful of salt.

CountV

Funny how Fox has the best of TV (X-files, Millennium, Simpsons, Futurama) and the WORST of TV (everything else on their line-up!)

really wonder how

management.

That's easy -- different management. The executive chairs at Fox have been filled by several different kiesters since the days when Simpsons was originally picked up. Pluss, as Groening says in another interview, the network was hungrier then and more willing to take risks.

--- Adam

In article , [email] says...

Oh, and I repect the heck out of Groening. I hope he never buckles. Luckily, he's probably made enough off the Simpsons that he isn't forced to bend to such lunacy.

P. Sanders psanders @ mindspring . com

That's because Tuesday is an absolutely sucky day to air a show in its infancy. Their best bet would be to change it back to Sunday or move it to Monday or Friday.