I've spent the last day or two watching every episode of Futurama, its a shame there's no more episodes.
In my humble opinion Futurama is as good as The Simpsons, so why was it comparatively short lived ?
Also could someone give me a breakdown on the TV scheduling system in the US, it seems complicated to me, what are Sweeps etc
UK schedulings simpler, we usually only get 6 episodes of anything, The simpsons episode where The Hooligans, I think is announced as Britains longest running show and "we will be showing all seven episodes" made me laugh.
Back to Futurama, are there any episodes that have not been shown yet ?
It was a time of great turmoil. The strong preyed on the weak, dogs and cats lived together. One voice cried out in the wilderness: "g0ldstarr" wrote in :
Two reasons: a bad time slot and lack of network support.
Here's where the bad time slot comes into play. When the Simpsons first debuted, the Fox network was relatively new and had few, if any popular shows. The Simpsons was one the first Fox shows to become a hit in the states and basically helped put Fox on the map as a legitimate TV network. Creator Matt Groening was rewarded by being given a new show to create and he created Futurama.
Initially, Futurama was run following The Simpsons and got great ratings. But Fox likes to test its new Sunday night comedies by putting them in time slot that follows The Simpsons. So a show called King of the Hill soon replaced Futurama in post-Simpsons time slot and got better ratings than any show that had ever followed The Simpsons so they kept it there. Futurama was bounced around a bit in the schedule but did OK at first. But Fox eventually put a show called Malcolm in the Middle in post-Simpsons slot and it also did great.
Now with three strong shows on Sunday night, Futurama found itself being the odd man out. Fox pushed it to the very beginning of its Sunday schedule 7pm (6pm central time). By this time Fox had a contract with the NFL to televise its football games and American football tend to run for more than three hours. This meant that Futurama would often get pre-empted and not be shown when a football game ran longer than expected. Making matters worse, American football is broadcast regionally so a game that ran long in Chicago would pre-empt Futurama in much of the American midwest while a game that didn't run long in New York would not and Futurama would air on the east coast.
As a result it was often a mystery whether or not Futurama would be shown a particular night or not. This and the fact that it was frequently being pre-empted in large portions of the country caused Futurama's ratings to fall, meaning that like all poorly performing shows, Fox would take it off the air during sweeps weeks. These are the weeks when a networks advertising rates are set so the networks generally pull out all the stops to increase their ratings during these weeks. Frequently, Futurama would be replaced by of all things, reruns of The Simpsons during sweeps periods.
In any case, Fox was never particular supportive of Futurama. Matt Groening has commented many times that the network just didn't get this show. And the frequent pre-emptions created a huge back log of unseen episodes so when Fox finally canceled Futurama, they were able to continue airing new episodes for almost two years the last of which were shown in June.
Maybe if Matt did a Simpson/Futurama crossover (like the Flintstones going into the future to visit the Jetsons) that might have helped. Then again, it might not... but still would be fun to watch Homer and Bender together...
Bender (Appearing insulted, folding his arms): "Why, yes I am..."
Homer (excitedly raises arms and poses like a monster with eyes wide open): "Can you say 'crush, kill, destroy!?'"
Bender is unimpressed, remains still with arms folded.
Homer: "Oh,oh...how about..." (speaking in monotone alien voice with arms stretched foward); "Take me to your leader".
Bender remains unimpressed while calmly looking over at Homer.
Bender: "Here, let me open that your beer for you..." (Bender opens door on front of his robot body, puts Homer's beer bottle inside and pops off bottle cap.)
It was a time of great turmoil. The strong preyed on the weak, dogs and cats lived together. One voice cried out in the wilderness: "d w a c o n" wrote in :
Actually IIRC, there actually was a comic book Simpson/Futurama crossover at one point but it didn't get made into a cartoon.
I've never read the comic, but I understand that the premise was that the Brain Spawn (villainous Futurama characters who had the ability to enter and send others into the stories in books) sent the Planet Express crew into a Simpsons comic book, allowing the two casts to interact. Within the usual Futurama continuity, however, "The Simpsons" is fictional, as Matt Groening pointed out several times even before Futurama had aired. I had heard that there were plans to have "The Simpsons" still on the air in Futurama, but they apparently never went through with it.
I rather think that Fox did everything they could to cause Futurama to fail, to "pay Groening back" for his continued criticism of Fox, even going to the extent of lampooning Fox in Simpsons episodes.
"Hey, Matt, think you're a genius, huh? Well, your stupid show flopped! Ha ha!"
It was a time of great turmoil. The strong preyed on the weak, dogs and cats lived together. One voice cried out in the wilderness: donutbandit wrote in :
That fails to take into account the fact that nobody at the Fox network has anything that even remotely resembles shame. They'll hang on to anything that makes money. Witness their countless reality shows and "when animals attack/get drunk/have sex with washed up celebrities" specials.
Can another network pick-up the show and pay for new episodes to me made or does Groening have some contract that states he can only make shows for Fox? I know that the Cartoon Network probably does not have the funds to pay for new episodes and I understand from the DVD commentary that the type of animation used costs more to create then what it costs the Simpson's or the Family Guy (or they could have been pulling our leg on that tidbit).
Anyway it was a great show and I wish they would release the next two DVD volumes here in the States.