Below is a translation of a piece of news found at http://web.elsitio.com/scripts/elsitio/buscador/template.asp?estado=1&link=d :\inetpub\wwwroot\elsitio\global\show\television\2000\01\11\glsitt_futurama. html (that's a Latin American site called "El Sitio", or "The Site"):
Not much future for Futurama: it ends in 2001
Hollywood, January 11, 2000 - The animated series Futurama didn't have The Simpsons' luck, despite being by the same creators, and it's confirmed that it ends in 2001.
Seeking for the acceptance that The Simpson [sic] had ten years ago, Matt Groenig [sic] and David Coen [sic] created Futurama, a series set in the year 3000, but it seems that they didn't get the results they wanted.
Apparently, the adventures of Fry -a twenty-year-old that accidentaly frozen himself in 1999 and woke up in the 30th century- didn't have a good welcome in the United States.
Neither in Latin America: what happened is that FOX -the station that broadcast Futurama in the region- didn't update the episodes too much and the debut episode, for example, was seen three times in the same month. [note: that's not true]
Now, FOX executives in the United States must decide how many more episodes will be ordered to the creators of Futurama. They're talking about 13 or 22 episodes.-
--- My guess is that they read that Futurama had ben renewed for the 2000-2001 season and invented that the show would end with it. What they say about FOX LA not updating the episodes is completely false, for they already showed 11 of the 17 existing episodes.
Cheers,