Jan 6 episode...or the last 12 minutes of it, anyway

...was great. At least the 12 minutes they showed on Eastern time zone TV was. It irks me to no end that they announce Futurama as on at 7:00 Eastern time. It just doesn't happen. The late football game starts at 4 and is NEVER (I repeat, NEVER) over by 7. And even by some small chance it is, they have a wrapup show afterward which takes at least 10 minutes anyway. What a crappy time slot. Hell, I'd rather it be slotted on Monday mornings at 3:30 AM. At least then I'd get to tape it and watch an entire episode for a change.

As long as I'm off on a tirade: I don't recall Eastern US folks seeing too many new episodes last season, either. At least they could have reaired these in the summer offseason...but I guess that's too much to ask.

Anyway...what I saw of the January 6 episode I loved. One of the things that really impresses me about Futurama is its awesome animation, and this episode had it in spades. The Space Invaders sequence was fantastic -- and it's nice to know Fry is a Rush fan! :-)

Being on the West Coast, I can say the middle segment on video games was truly inspired; be glad you at least caught the tail-end of it. Just brilliant stuff. The first segment, when Fry became human, wasn't bad either. Last segment had some good stuff as well.

You're right, when I was on the East Coast last season, I gave up on watching the show almost entirely. I think once Fox realized that this was not going to be the next Simpsons, they just pushed it to the back burner rather than canceling it.

"RDK" wrote in message news:[email]...

I see the reasoning, but I don't think it's a fair assessment. The only episode of Futurama I remember being at a decent time was the pilot. Otherwise, they've all been subject to being on too early, or pre-empted by football. Futurama MIGHT be the next Simpsons, or at least a nice runner up, if they'd let people see the show.

I would LOVE to see an official reason from FOX why they continue to mangle this show. And then I'd like to see the real reason.

They definitely didn't give it long enough (the networks are hardly known for patience), but I tend to think it was in the 8:30 slot for more than the pilot. It seems like maybe even the first few months, I just can't recall now.

"Jerry Cornelius" wrote in message news:dT8_7.17313$[email]...

=v= I think Matt Groening himself explained it best in a 1999 interview with _Salon_:

What I told Fox was that it would be just like _The_Simpsons_, and they jumped up and down. And when I showed them what I came up with they said, "This isn't like _The_Simpsons_." I said, "Yeah it is. It's new and original, just like _The_Simpsons_."

The Fox executives are too clueless to realize what a gem they've got on their hands. <_Jym_>

RDK wrote:

Did you get to see the Leela story too? That was the final one and it had some great Wizard of Oz jokes.

I loved the video game story, especially the (I'm paraphasing here) "It's Saturday night and I have no date. I've got a 2 liter bottle of Shasta and my Rush mix tape" line. Lots of older video gamers are going to relate to that one! :) The writers knew their game history...it was truly a great episode.

On Mon, 07 Jan 2002 03:42:23 GMT, Tom Georgoulias wrote:

I started college in 1979, when the video game boom was starting. I majored in Space Invaders and wrote my thesis on how to count your shots to make sure the bonus ship would be 400 points. Some of my theories were too radical for the tenured professors, but they did finally released a follow up game and I showed them!

I've also been to every Rush tour since 1978 (Hemispheres) and I have all their albums. However, I prefer playing Bob Marley for Nintendo. Incidently, the song they were playing was "Tom Sawyer" from the Moving Pictures album.

Needless to say, that whole segment was pure gold. They've done a few old video game references in the past, such as "Fear of a Bot Planet" (Tetris and Berserk).

--Larry

"RDK" wrote in message news:[email]...

I didn't even bother stopping what I was doing to see if it had a chance of being on tonight here in Cleveland. After having taped and over analyzed every episode up to this one (except "War is the H word" that Larry helped me out with) FOX has now completely killed any enthusiasm I had left for the show from last May. Hopefully once Football is over I can get into it again (for the whole 9 or 10 episodes they'll run) and actually post here about the show again. But for now I've had it.

"Michael Zaite" wrote in message news:...

And it's not that I have anything against football, either...although I do prefer college football to pro, I still love to watch the NFL. But what I hate is when it's 6:58 PM, there's less than 3 minutes left to go in the game, the score is 31-13, and they stick with the coverage -- including the bullshit postgame wrapup. Barring any unforeseen "Heidi" incidents, I think it'd be safe to break coverage at that point.

"RDK" wrote in message news:[email]...

news:...

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I think It would at least be nice if FOX required it's affiliates to re-run inturupted shows by contract. As opposed to the "If they feel like it" attitude they have now.

RDK wrote:

Right, that did it. I go out of my way to come up with a list of cities each week that get the late game on Fox when a new episode is scheduled and STILL there's somebody who doesn't get the message. I've had it. That is the last time I'm doing that this season.

For those of you who follow my Upcoming Episodes posts waiting for this information, don't panic - during the playoffs, either every Fox station in the eastern half of the country gets an episode or none do, as Fox shows the same Sunday game (and there's only one per Sunday on Fox) on all of its stations.

Tell me, which of these cities' (or city in the vicinities of) Fox stations do you watching: Atlanta, Boston, Buffalo, Charlotte, Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Memphis, Miami, or St. Louis? I think those are the only areas that got this episode "joined in progress".

Actually, there was one that actually ended at about 6:35 a few weeks ago (unfortunately, it was on CBS). In fact, when there's no doubleheader scheduled, the games start at 4:05. (When there IS a doubleheader on Fox, the late games start at 4:15, and Fox already knows they won't end by 7:30, so they simply don't schedule Futurama that night in the east, and show a previous-season repeat in the west. Twice this season, the game ran so long that a scheduled new "King of the Hill" had to be postponed, but that's another story for another newsgroup.)

Last season, only three new episodes (The Honking; War is the H-Word; The Cryonic Woman) aired during football season (well, Parasites Lost first aired during the playoffs, but only because Fox didn't have any 4:00 games that day, so every station saw it), and each of those episodes aired a second time no later than June 3.

I'll confirm that Chicago was also in the 'in-progress' crowd. The game shown (Atl vs StL, IIRC) ending practically at 6p CST, but with their necessary recaps, the cutover to Futurama didn't happen for another 12 minutes, coming in right during the Pac-Man Maze sequence.

Don Del Grande wrote in message news:...

Hey, I've seen your messages from time to time, Don. I'm not really a regular here, though. But hey, I can still bitch and moan about the crappy timeslot that this show has been given, no? Us Eastern time zone folk haven't got to see too many new episodes in the past 2 years.

Cincinnati (Channel 19, WXIX).

Ah, so the West doesn't get the new ep either, eh? Question then: are there a small backlog of eps that didn't air at all from *last* season still waiting to be aired for the first time?

OK...so only three or four episodes were made last season then? That's not much of a series, is it? I just don't know how Fox expects to get any regular viewers of this show when they air a new episode (or *an* episode, for that matter) "every now and then."

"RDK" wrote in message news:[email]...

Ever stop to think maybe this gets done to f**king death every season? I appreciate what Don does, helps me plan my sunday evenings.

I don't know about you, but I've seen as many new episodes in the past 2 years as anyone else has. Even if you can't d/l them, the new ones get re-run by the end of summer anyhow. (And there aren't very many scheduled during football season anyhow.)

Every new ep so far this season has been one of those.

Hey, just thank your lucky stars they hold off the majority of new shows till *after* football season. Just think if they really REALLY wanted to screw the show, they could let *new* shows get pre-empted every week. IMO, they've done a pretty good job of not letting that happen, intentionally or not.

Don Del Grande wrote:

It was joined in progress in Kansas City too. The worst part was that if not for the supid post-game crap and several minutes of NFL promo commercials this episode probably could have been joined right after the opning credits. Instead it was joined while Pac-Man was being played.

Scott Murdock wrote:

Actually, my city listing was slightly off - it was based on the original September 16 schedule, and I didn't realize that the NFL had moved some games around - and I also shouldn't have said those were the "only" cities, as any city outside of an NFL home market could have shown that St. Louis game and ended up with Futurama already in progress.

However...wasn't the Kansas City-Seattle game on CBS at 4:15? (That's what the NFL schedule said.) Why would KC's Fox station choose to show a 4:05 game when there's a Chiefs game at the same time on CBS? (Let me guess: a lot of Rams fans live near Kansas City as well.)

I'm guessing that the impact of the Altanta - StLouis game, specifically, that if StL won, that they would cinch home field advantage throughough the playoffs. If it was something like the Browns/Bengals, for example, then it might have been less iffy.

Of course, I've also noticed that if Fox has, say, 3 games in the second slot and one game ends early compared to the others, FOX will switch to the remaining games in progress as long as they have football up, regardless the quality of the play unless it's like the last 30 seconds of a game. I remember one time where the scheduled game in my area ended at 5 minites till Futurama, but FOX switched to one game for 10 mintues, then to another game for another 10 minutes after the second one ended, then added 10 more minutes of their wrapup.

While I completely understand why football ratings are more important than Futurama's, I only wish FOX did was it did 4-6 years ago, that is, put some crap show such as that home video show at the 7pm slot, such that they won't piss off anyone when football runs long. Move Futurama to some other night; now that they have a possible Thursday night contender for Friends/Survivor, at least offering something that would meet the tastes of those viewers that probably don't watch either of the shows, that seems like a great line up: Futurama, Family Guy, and the Tick. Maybe throw a Malcolm at the end there or another Simpsons. That would be the best solution for everyone, but why they don't do this is beyond me...

Michael K. Neylon wrote:

They have, in fact, switched to games that have reached the "take a knee" stage. Fox - and CBS, for that matter - will always switch to a game in progress if they can; two announced new "King of the Hill" episodes were pre-empted this season because of this policy. (I usually point out how many games are being shown by Fox in the late slot as a precaution - in this case, the St. Louis game was the only one.)

I can think of two reasons why it's still on Sundays at 7:00: 1. A number of people (wasn't Matt Groening among them?) wanted Futurama and The Simpsons to air on the same night; 2. Fox is under some impression that it's harder to make Futurama because of the computer graphics involved, so there aren't as many episodes per season, and the only time slot that's pre-empted on anything resembling a regular basis is Sunday at 7.

Personally, I would have agreed with you - Futurama on Thursdays at 8, move Family Guy to Wednesdays at 8, and move the Wednesday rerun block to Sundays at 7. However, now with Friends almost certainly in its last season, Fox probably smells an opportunity to compete against some new show with a new show of its own (unless NBC decides to move one of its semi-hits like Scrubs to the Friends slot).

In alt.tv.futurama, on the "Re: Jan 6 episode...or the last 12 minutes of it, anyway" thread, Milhouse Van Houten wrote:

They were on for less than a month -- maybe two or three episodes -- before moving to Tuesday nights at 8:30. It was part of a short-lived animation block that night, including "Family Guy" and "The PJs." "Futurama's" ratings on Tuesdays weren't much better than they are now. Some people on the newsgroup suggested that "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," which ran from 8-9 on the WB that night, claimed all the SF fans who might have been interested in watching "Futurama."

Michael K. Neylon suggested:

Oops! I heard a couple days ago that Fox canned "The Tick," so maybe Fox doesn't have a possible contender, after all.

Notice that Fox essentially does have a half-hour slot open, after all -- Wednesday at 8:00, which they normally use to re-run an episode of "That 70s Show" or "Malcolm in the Middle." They don't show any inclination to move "Futurama" there, which means that the show *has been out-prioritized by a rerun!* How's that for a slap in the face?

"Don Del Grande" wrote in message news:[email]...

Pittsburgh also joined the ep "in progress" at about the same time everyone else has mentioned: during the Pac-Man maze sequence.

=v= Well, I appreciate your efforts, and understand why you'd be frustrated. Actually, I understand why everyone's frustrated.

=v= Hardcore _Futurama_ fans should probably just do what I did:
move to the West Coast.
    HTH, HAND,
    <_Jym_>

Any jobs out there for an ex-farmboy with diplomas in electronics and commercial art?

DGH

People who really care should try writing a letter to Fox. In the end it may not make much of a difference, but it's far more likely to have an effect than bitching on the newsgroup[1] and hoping a Fox exec will wander into the newsgroup, read it and smack themselves on the head[2] and change things.

[1] I don't mean that it's wrong or bad to vent on the newsgroup, but you should vent AND write a letter if you want any hope of something happening. And that means paper letter, not e-mail.

[2] Would it make a hollow sound?

 -- Z.
                                                                           ____
  Outlawing drugs in order to solve drug problems is much like outlawing   \  /
  sex... to win the war against AIDS.    [Ronald Siegel, "Intoxication"]    \/

The video-game segment was priceless. Milady and I were playing "name the character" during it. I miss Q*Bert.

Sad to say, though, that "All your base are belong to us" has jumped the shark now that it's had global airtime. Alas.

Why is that always done, anyways?

Are football fans too stupid to remember or comprehend what they've just seen mere minutes earlier?

Does this really need an answer? Any moron willing to stand out in -15 degree weather wearing nothing but a thong and body paint to watch a game in the first place more than likely killed a few brain cells courtesy of the nice people at Anheisher-Busch.

DJ MaNiAk

Put on ya leather pants/and do the isolation dance/like some stupid-ass Goth kid that didn't stand a chance against me

The Four Horsemen: Kicking the shit out of people with baseball bats and tire irons in parking lots since 1985.

"DJ MaNiAk" wrote in message news:[email]...

Except that the people who are going to be watching the post-game show are the ones smart enough to stay home in the hopes of catching Futurama.

In alt.tv.futurama, on the "Re: Jan 6 episode...or the last 12 minutes of it, anyway" thread, Gyumaoh wrote:

(a) Football post-game shows draw ratings numbers that are almost as good as the game itself.

(b) They'll show highlights from all the games that weren't broadcast in full that night, so it's not like they're just rehashing something that you already saw.