12/15 - Pre-empted in the east for NFL football; the west will get
"Leela's Homeworld" (when Bender dumps toxic waste into the
sewers, he, Fry, and Leela are captured by the underground
mutants; that song at the end is "Baby Love Child" by
Pizzicato Five)12/22 - NEW EPISODE - Taste of Freedom (4ACV05)
Dr. Zoidberg spends Freedom Day inside his race's embassy when
he's chased after he celebrates his freedom by eating an Earth
flag
And now, for the LAST TIME (since this is the last time there will
be a choice of games - 12/29 is a doubleheader day, and after that
the playoffs begin, with Fox showing everybody the same game on
each Sunday), here is the list of Eastern and Central time zone cities
that don't get to choose whether to show a 1:00 (Eastern) game or a
4:05 one (note the only 4:05 game is St. Louis at Seattle):
Definitely a full episode - Chicago, Detroit, New Orleans, New York
Probably a full episode (*definitely a full episode if the game is
sold out) - Atlanta*, Baltimore*, Charlotte*, Cincinnati*,
Cleveland, Indianapolis*
Probably "in progress" (*definitely in progress if the game is sold
out) - Buffalo, Houston, Jacksonville*, Kansas City* (almost
certainly in KC, as the Fox station probably wants to show the Rams
game at 3:05), Nashville, Washington*
Definitely "in progress": Green Bay, St. Louis12/29 - Pre-empted in the east for NFL football; the west will get -
well, the listings say "Crimes of the Hot" (when there's no
more ice to do the usual global warming fix of dropping a
giant ice cube into the ocean, Al Gore hosts a global warming
conference where Professor Farnsworth reveals that it's being
caused by robots), but it doesn't sound right for Fox to air
a current-season repeat if only the western half of the
country will see it1/ 5 - Pre-empted by an NFL first-round playoff game, although they may air a repeat in the west
1/12 - According to the NFL's schedule, the only game on Fox that
day is scheduled to begin at 1:00 PM Eastern (and since it
is impossible for both NFC games that weekend to be in Pacific
time zone cities, I don't think this will change), so there
should be an episode for everybody - presumably, a new one1/19 - According to the NFL's schedule, the only game on Fox that
day is scheduled to begin at 3:00 PM Eastern, and even if it
is played in San Francisco or Seattle, a noon local time start
is not a problem, so lacking a four-hour marathon (which is not
unheard of, especially recently), everybody should get an
episode; whether it is a new one or not remains to be seen
(although if it is a repeat of one of this season's episodes
and it ends up "in progress" again, expect a lot of yelling
from those cities that didn't get that episode in full the
first time)1/26 - Probably a repeat, as it is Super Bowl Sunday (and the Super Bowl is not on Fox this year)
(For those of you who said "they'll find a way to hold the 1/12 NFC game in a Pacific time zone city to screw over the Futurama fans": the NFC games that weekend (one Saturday, one Sunday) are hosted by the two conference champions with the best records, and since three NFC conferences consist entirely of teams in the Eastern and Central time zones, at least one of them has to host one of those two games. If, say, San Francisco does happen to get to host a game that weekend, it would be on Saturday 1/11 at 4:30, as Fox is already scheduled to show a game at that time.)
FUTURAMA REGION 1 DVD REPORT: According to one report, the Season 1 (that's production season 1, with the first 13 episodes) Futurama DVD set will be released in the USA and Canada on March 25; the "suggested retail price" is supposed to be $50, but DVDPlanet already has it on pre-order for $21 but lists its "retail price" as $30
(Also, Family Guy will be available on DVD on April 8; I've heard that it will be the first 25 episodes.)