They could do new episodes for Sci-Fi, Cartoon Network or even syndication. Just because Fox may pull the plug is no excuse to stop making new episodes. Get the episode count past 100 any way possible so it can be stripped.
--David Johnson
Keep the show in production--who needs Fox??
Feb 12, 2002, 9:44 AM ET29 posts by 18 postersalt.tv.futurama
29 posts
David Johnson wrote:
Who started this whole "you need 100 episodes to go into syndication" thing, as if nobody would accept 95? Weren't there only 80 episodes of the original "Star Trek", which did quite well in syndication in its day?
Okay, the last Futurama list I saw only had 72 episodes (including ones still in production, and that assumes Fox didn't order production stopped), which is a little short, but that isn't necessarily a bad thing either, as that would speed up the potential release of the show on DVD.
(It is possible to switch networks - after all, Fox took "The Critic" when ABC dumped it, and later WB got "The PJs" from Fox.
Don Del Grande wrote:
Anyone know if production is going to be stopped on the unfinished episodes? If the rumor started at Rough Draft, would those sources who broke the bad news today know this?
Um, by my count only 48 episodes have been aired to date. I'd be very surprised if there were 24 in production.
On Tue, 12 Feb 2002 18:57:18 -0800, Don Del Grande wrote:
Then surprise! Here's the complete episode list. There are 24 episodes still to be aired, including next week's "Leela's Homeworld".
Read you later...
P-Code Episode Title 1ACV01 Space Pilot 3000 1ACV02 The Series Has Landed 1ACV03 I, Roommate 1ACV04 Love's Labors Lost in Space 1ACV05 Fear of a Bot Planet 1ACV06 A Fishfull of Dollars 1ACV07 My Three Suns 1ACV08 A Big Piece of Garbage 1ACV09 Hell is Other Robots 1ACV10 A Flight to Remember 1ACV11 Mars University 1ACV12 When Aliens Attack 1ACV13 Fry and the Slurm Factory 2ACV01 I Second That Emotion 2ACV02 Brannigan Begin Again 2ACV03 A Head in the Polls 2ACV04 Xmas Story 2ACV05 Why Must I Be a Crustacean in Love 2ACV06 Put Your Head on my Shoulder 2ACV07 Lesser of Two Evils 2ACV08 Raging Bender 2ACV09 A Bicyclops Built For Two 2ACV10 A Clone of my Own 2ACV11 How Hermes Requisitioned His Groove Back 2ACV12 The Deep South 2ACV13 Bender Gets Made 2ACV14 Mother's Day 2ACV15 The Problem With Popplers 2ACV16 Anthology of Interest I 2ACV17 War is the H-Word 2ACV18 The Honking 2ACV19 The Cryonic Woman 3ACV01 Amazon Women in the Mood 3ACV02 Parasites Lost 3ACV03 A Tale of Two Santas 3ACV04 The Luck of the Fryrish 3ACV05 The Birdbot of Ice-Catraz 3ACV06 Bendless Love 3ACV07 The Day the Earth Stood Stupid 3ACV08 That's Lobstertainment 3ACV09 The Cyber House Rules 3ACV10 Where the Buggalo Roam 3ACV11 Insane in the Mainframe 3ACV12 The Route of All Evil 3ACV13 Bendin' in the Wind 3ACV14 Time Keeps on Slippin' 3ACV15 I Dated a Robot 3ACV16 A Leela of Her Own 3ACV17 A Pharaoh to Remember 3ACV18 Anthology of Interest II 3ACV19 Roswell That Ends Well 3ACV20 Godfellas 3ACV21 Future Stock 3ACV22 The 30% Iron Chef 4ACV01 Kif Gets Knocked Up a Notch 4ACV02 Leela's Homeworld 4ACV03 Love and Rocket 4ACV04 Less Than Hero 4ACV05 A Taste of Freedom 4ACV06 Bender Should Not Be Allowed on TV 4ACV07 Jurassic Bark 4ACV08 Crimes of the Hot 4ACV09 Futurama Babies 4ACV10 The Why of Fry 4ACV11 Where No Fan Has Gone Before 4ACV12 The Sting 4ACV13 Bend Her 4ACV14 Obsoletely Fabulous 4ACV15 The Farnsworth Parabox 4ACV16 Three Hundred Big Boys 4ACV17 Spanish Fry 4ACV18 Idle Hands Are the Devil's Playthings
On 13 Feb 2002 00:27:41 -0800, [email] (Leandro Pardini) wrote:
Worst episode ever
Worst episode ever
Worst episode ever
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Worst episode ever
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Worst episode ever
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Worst episode ever
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WOOHOO I got to be the first to say "Worst episode ever" a whole bunch of times!!!
At the rate they are going, they could run well into 2004 without any more episodes. Perhaps they will order more new ones in 2003. Well worth a good letter writing campaign.
--Larry
I'm ready. So does anybody have email and snail mail lists of every relevant Fox suit?
DGH
Those will have to do.
Email: [email]
Smail:
Ms. Gail Berman President Building 100 Room 4450 10201 W. Pico Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90035 United States of America
and
Mr. Sandy Grushow Chairman Building 100 Room 5110 10201 W. Pico Blvd. Los Angeles, CA 90035 United States of America
Also, there are two online petitions - although they probably have no effect at all, it only takes a minute to sign them both:
In article , [email] says...
If you wanna get an extended list, check my sig.
-< Moon >-
On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 10:11:28 +0100, Moon wrote:
As promised, I am surprised! Where do you get titles of unaired episodes from?
I think that 100 eps gives them enough of a library so that you're not repeating the same episodes over and over again every couple of months. Since most stations show a syndicated episode a day, every weekday, you can go through almost a season a month. For instance, last month, there were 23 weekdays, this month there are 20. Of course this doesn't account for holidays, emergencies, etc. So with a 100 episode library, it will take 4-moths to show 100 episodes, but if you have 75 or so, it will only take about 3 months. I know there are exceptions to the rule, i.e. Star Trek and The Honeymooners, but those were syndicated long before the current 100 episode rule came into effect.
I would be so pissed if Sci-Fi took up the show because their niche for comedy doesn't ring at all, after all, that was the network that skunked up MST3K.
And Cartoon Network only airs adult shows late night on Sunday, which is the worst night to stay up late since most people would prefer to be well rested to go back to work.
And syndication of a half-hour comedy wouldn't really work because most syndicated fiction shows are hour-long action/adventure.
Since Fox has so many adult-oriented cartoons, maybe they could start a cartoon block on their cable network FX. There they could have Simpsons, King of the Hill, Family Guy, Critic, PJs, and Futurama.
what about Comedy Central?
"Jack Of Spades" wrote in message news:[email]...
"Doug Tabacco" wrote in message news:AMka8.3076$[email]...
Exactly. My three ideas were for Futurama to move to Comedy Central, Sci-Fi Channel, or Cartoon Network, as it fits into all three genres. If Comedy Central or Sci-Fi Channel were to pick it up, I might consider forgiving them for cancelling MST3K (assuming they don't give it the same shabby treatment). Cartoon Network would be my third pick. That's as far as cable goes. It'd be nice to have Futurama move to one of the other major networks though.
"JoshG" wrote in message news:Rwla8.1233$[email]...
<...>
networks
I wouldn't. The other networks have proven time and again that they have no clue what's so ever about running a primetime cartoon.
Hmmm... just like Fox has shown in relation to its treatment of Futurama. Yep, they certainly know how to treat animated shows! :)
So... do nothing is the order for the day?
Graham
The Leela Zone - http://www.leela.com.ar/
On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 23:59:25 GMT, "Michael Zaite" wrote:
One of the reasons that Fox is so crappy towards Futurama is that they don't own the rights. Matt owns the show. If Fox cancels it, they can take it out and shop it.
ABC, NBC, or CBS could grab it and run it against the Simpsons. Despite the poor scheduling and the extreme lack of promotion, it has won in it's time slot in key markets. The Simpsons and The Worlds Blankiest Blank are the anchors on Fox. Even if Futurama had relatively low numbers most of the audience would be taken away from Fox. The big three would love to put Fox back in their place.
For WB or UPN the show would be one of their most popular.
As of now, Fox has *not* canceled Futurama. They simply didn't order a fifth season.. They've shown 48 episodes in 3+ years. They have 24 episodes in the can. At that rate, they could wait a year and if the show's audience continues to grow, they can order a fifth season. They may also want to keep it going just to stop the big three from getting it.
There's no way to tell what's going to happen next.
--Larry
"Larry" wrote in message news:[email]...
no
I really can't believe that you honestly think any of the big three would actually know what to do with Futurama. And as for UPN, WB, Sci-Fi, CC, or Cartoon Network. I doubt any of them can or will fork up the kind of cash a show like Futurama requires.
On Thu, 14 Feb 2002 07:57:43 GMT, "Michael Zaite" wrote:
I doubt they would know what to do *right* with it. They may just realize that the Simpsons audience crossover is enough that they could take Fox down a notch. Perhaps Fox will consider keeping the show in production just to make sure that doesn't happen.
Whichever one is currently suing Fox over the Chair / The Chamber might just try it just to be spiteful.
I'm not saying it's probable, but it could happen.TV networks have run high quality intelligent programming in decent timeslots before. Just because I can't think of a single example doesn't mean it never happened.
UPN / WB might just cough up the cash to attempt to buy some credibility. I don't know what channel either of them is on in Phoenix because nothing has inspired me to tune them in. I did catch the first few eps of ST:Voyager and that was it. If one of them bought Futurama, even for a year or two, I would tune them in. They could attempt to leverage the new audience by running tons of promos for their existing programs. Again, not likely, just a possibility.
SciFi / CC could make a relatively low price offer and sweeten the deal with on air commitments for other projects. "If you bring Futurama to CC, we will run four half hour pilots for anything you come up with" sort of a deal.
The most likely outcome is that Futurama will run until Fox uses up the episodes they have and that's it. That would be the "elephant in the room" outcome and everyone already knows it. I'm just speculating on alternatives.
--Larry
"Larry" wrote in message news:[email]...
<...>
You don't seem to get it. Do you know how Shitty Futurama would be on 1/2 it's current budget? that means 1/2 the cast/Writers/quality. What would be the point?
The only drawback I see with Comedy Central is that there are so many good shows on that network already. Where Futurama would fit into the schedule is the big question, sure they could give Futurama a good time slot, but at the sacrifice of the time slot for other good shows. Maybe South Park is old enough, hey there we go!
As far as broadcast networks go, the only other network that would seem reasonable for Futurama would be UPN since they have good niche for anything in the Sci-Fi persuasion, plus it could be succeed over the other shows easily on the network giving UPN a reason to keep it around. Sure the other networks could give it a go, but the results would be way too experimental, how about we run down the networks:
CBS - Currently shows no interest in animation and that's good assuming their early 90's failures.
NBC - Would see it solely as a "pre-season reason" and then pump out their other plans, and couldn't be blamed since they have no reason to have animated cartoons mainly because they already have good standing with real people shows.
ABC - No, I don't wan't Disney to get involved in this.
WB - Being surrounded by teeny-bopper shows, I don't think Futurama would fit in.
Well, they could dump or move Beat the Geeks :)
"Jack Of Spades" wrote in message news:[email]...
Sci-Fi
cable
networks
On 14 Feb 2002 17:30:47 -0800, [email] (Jack Of Spades) spewed forth:
Or kick off some of the cack like 'The Chris Wylde Show' and 'Insomniac', or maybe run one less SNL rerun a week.
On Tue, 12 Feb 2002 22:56:37 -0500, "JoshG" wrote:
I would be very cautious about moving it to one of the Big Three. My reason is the fate of the Clerks cartoon series. The people at ABC were apparently on drugs when they decided to carry it, because once the first six episodes were done, they aired only two (out of order) and then dropped it without informing anyone (even the creators). They also gave Kevin Smith and his people a bunch of crap about things they wanted to censor. The audio commentary on the DVD discusses all this.
The moral of the story is that big networks like ABC don't handle "edgy" shows very well. Futurama fits somewhat into that category, so I would be dubious about how it would fare with them.
Actually, I think the execs at ABC had a serious case of "rectal-cranial inversion" when all this happened. What I read was that they wanted Kevin Smith to do an animated "Clerks" since it was supposed to be so great and he was the hot item at the moment, but yet they never watched the movie until after the episodes were finished. So they watched the movie, and through some weird logic, thought that the cartoon would be just like movie, profanity and all, and then decided not to air it at all, and then later decided to burn off the eps in the middle of summer.
In article , [email] (Ken) wrote:
Hey, man. Stop talking about Futurama like it's already dead. *bursts into tears*
"Jack Of Spades" wrote in message news:[email]...
Better SciFi air it than no one at all. I don't think MST3K was much worse on SciFi (no Dr. Forrester, but that's because the actor who played him decided to quit the role; it wasen't SciFi's fault.)
True, but they've been getting excellent ratings for that block-so much so that it will soon be expanded with different shows on Saturday nights, so somebody's watching. I tend to get to be early on sundays too, but I just set the ol' VCR.
If they did, it would just be reruns. Practically everything on FX is reruns.
-Wyvern
On Wed, 13 Feb 2002 05:53:09 GMT, "Wyvern" wrote:
I think the SciFi Channels host segments were the best since TV's Frank left the show. Bobo and Brain Guy are great characters. The last season at Comedy Central was the worst, SciFi channel was a big step back up. Sure the early Joel episodes are still most of my favorites, but they were the first ones I saw.
Since the audience is more Science Fiction oriented, Futurama would probably go over very well on SciFi channel. It may well depend on the rights to the show. If Fox owns the characters, as they do on The Simpsons, then they can't leave with it. If Matt kept the rights, he can go where he wants with it if Fox drops it.
--Larry
Personally, I think it would be friggen awesome if Cartoon Network picked it up! I don't think it would be so bad if Futurama were the first show during the Adult Swim block (which would mean it airs 10pm Sunday night), and Cartoon Network would treat it with respect.
Only one commerical break per half hour, no messing around with opening theme, no credit crunchers....and during the Adult Swim block not even voice overs during the credits!
Now of course if this is too late, that's what the 'ol VCR is for.