They definately turned down the wackiness in this episode but there were many good gags. I love how they included the Futurama cancelation into an episode about media consolidation, afterall if Groenings production company could fight Fox they would have and thus saved Futurama. Its pretty much a fact that Futurama died because Fox would not commit to a regular timeslot. Matt had no say on this and watched his show collapse from people saying "When is that thing on?"
The Simpsons has always tackled social issues, the show is pretty much an unflattering yet amusing satire of middle class American life. In the end I think this episode was more of a serious commentary than slapstick humor (which most fans appreciate). I believe this was largely an allegory of how Fox, Time-Warner, et al have considated into a media elite mess and the ending was a metaphor for emerging blogs and internet self-publishing. Sure, they all produced 'zines, but in the digital age that's kinda silly and a blog reference would have been lost on most people, not to mention they already did the "i made a website" gag with the "Prisoner" episode.