Slashdot Mirror
Concerning The Cancellation of Futurama
Andie Similon of gotfuturama.com writes: "We have recently heard from 4 reliable sources that fox did not pick up the 5th season of futurama. So it's going to get cancelled. We (the fans and webmasters of cgef and other websites) have set up a letter campaign to Fox,' but we need some big sites to spread the word. There are two possibilities of saving futurama A) some other network picking it up B) Fox realizing its mistake (I don't count on it), but the only way we can realise this is that we can get a very big amount of written letters to Fox." Go read the online petition
and/or
sign it. They've temporarily removed other content on anything else from the site -- there are priorities, after all. Futurama is one of the few shows that make me glad for the invention of television.
Well. I guess Groening can't have every series mirror 'The Simpsons'.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
I love the Simpsons, but never got into Futurama because there was never enough promotion of the show to make me remember to turn it on. I've seen a couple of episodes of Futurama, but I couldn't tell you what time it's on, or for that matter which day.
My other sig is extremely clever...
X-Files - last season
The Tick - Cancelled
Futurama - Cancelled
The Chamber (which they fought so hard to get it out before the chair) - cancelled (thank God)
just what in the hell are they going to replace these shows with? Its not like a lot of quality material is knocking down the door at FOX
(that 80's Show?... uggg)
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
But like the "Tick" guy said in his interview, the whole letter-writing campaign thing has been played to death. Especially when a show has been on the air for four years, you can't exactly expect the network to "just give it a chance to build an audience". If they haven't got their audience already, I'm afraid a couple hundred people writing and saying "but, but, it's cool!" isn't going to change their mind.
*shrug* Sorry, but that's the way it is...
I don't remember the entire history but America's Most Wanted was saved by petition. ABC dropped it, Fox picked it up, dropped it, and then brought it back after thousands of people wrote in complaining about the cancellation.
The networks do care what you think - without you they have no one to sell ads to. Write in today!
Its a shame to see it go...
But was there any inidication? Were they going down hill? And of course the most important question: What on earth do they have that's gonna be better? Fear Factor with Hentai Anime?
sheez...
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
So is this why there's only been three episodes this season?
*sigh* At least they still have Family Guy.
Luckily here we are a bit after so it means I still have episdsdes that has not been aired yet.
It is not impossible to get a tv series to be be resurrected - just look at Nikita who through a online campaign got extended.
Bender you will be missed!!!
Just saying it like it are.
I am sorry guys, but Futurama is not that great a show. Frankly its pretty stupid. I am a big fan of the Simpsons and most SciFi shows (except of course MutantX), but this show is just plain dumb. Good riddance.
:P
I loved the Simpsons in it's "prime" (circa seasons 2 through 7), but lately it has become tired and predictable. Futurama is laugh-out-loud funny and clever and ways that the Simpsons once promised but have stopped even trying to achieve.
If you need to kill something Rupert, put the Simpsons to bed and move Futurama to the 8E/7C time slot. Having it at 7E/6C time slot is worthless considering FOX is a football network and football games never finish before then. I can't recall seeing a single episode that I actually sat at the TV waiting for.
"More organs means more human." - Zim
A real shame that the Simpsons continues to be milked long past it's prime (let's not kid ourselves; Simpsons has been in a steady decline for some time now) while Futurama gets neglected despite a noticable superiority in both animation quality and humor (the recent Anthology ep, for example).
Of course there were other ones like Capital Critters (anyone remember that?) that didn't last long at all.
Anyhow Futurama has had a hard time holding its own from the beginning. Some people attribute this to it not being done by Film Roman, the ones responsable for the work behind The Simpsons and King of the Hill, but I doubt that is it.
I personally miss primetime animated series so I hope the petition goes through so everyone sign away :o)
--- Whasabi!
I think Futurama might have gotten more of a chance to build a fan base if it weren't always pre-empted by FOX NFL games.
Not to be a picky little bitch, but if you are going to submit a petition to a major network begging them not to kill your favorite TV show, and then ask thousands of others to sign along with you, take a minute to run it through your spell checker.
-Rothfuss
We carry a harpoon.
But there ain't no whales
So we tell tall tales
And sing our whaling tune.
Every year, I'll sprinkle a drop or two of Mom's robot oil on the grave and reminisce. <sniff>
One CPU cycle wasted on digital restrictions management is ONE TOO MANY.
Many good shows have been cancelled before. And maybe it's better that way. Once they reach their peak, they start to degenerate rather fast - just look at the Simpsons, which should have been dropped after season 7.
Many other excellent shows have been cancelled before hitting their prime, (My So-called Life and Freaks And Geeks come to mind), but this isn't the case here - Futurama is terrific, and I don't think it can get any better, only worst.
Why can't we do this for Invader Zim?
This petition won't do anything, and has some of the most atrocious spelling errors I've seen in awhile, but it's a nice effort. While I sincerely doubt that FOX will do more than glance at the top page before throwing it away, I have to wonder who's in charge of scheduling there. They've lost a lot of shows that had decent followings, and kept some absolute crap on.
I've always enjoyed Futurama, that is when I got a chance to watch it. Unfortunatly, on the East Coast, if Fox is showing any NFL game, it will inevitably run over the time slot for Futurama. This happened even with the SEASON PREMIER. So, as far as I'm concerned, I didn't watch it because they didn't air it. I seem to recall the same thing happening at back home in Miami with a Time Cop show. I never got to see it because the local ABC affiliate decided they should talk about monday night football instead.
Pretty cool thing...you can see the Slashdot effect in real time. Hit reload and the signature #'s on the page increase by about 2-3 a second.
"I'll just chip in a bit for RedHat: I actually have that installed on my university machine." - Linus, '95
Perhaps FOX should switch the timeslots of Futurama and Malcolm in the Middle for, say, a month.
FOX seems to have a history of trying to prop up weaker timeslots by relegating popular shows to crap times when no one is watching (or when everyone is watching other channels). Even the Simpsons got this treatment for a season or so, back when FOX didn't have as much strong programming to fall back on. The lack of good content to replace it on Sunday night at that time may be what saved the show from being cancelled; FOX just moved it back to the original 8 pm timeslot.
If all else fails, perhaps the creators could see about getting the Comedy Channel or the Cartoon Network to fund and pick it up, something not unheard of for cult hits that get chopped by their original network.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
If Fox didn't prempt it every other week for some game or another maybe it could get itto a groove that would make people watch all the time. How can you expect to develop a following if you only air the show once every other month. Constantly prempting a show is as bad as changeing its time slot 6 times over the season, and then blame a lack of rateings for the cancelation.
I have seen the same thing being said about Family Guy as well. What the hell is going on over there at FOX? I can only hope that the reason all these really good shows (Fox's only good shows in my opinion) haven't been renewed for new seasons is whomever job it is to renew shows is waaaaaay asleep at the wheel.
I bet they're going to tell fans it's because of file sharing and 9/11. Sounds like a scummy network thing to do.
"The Wright brothers were the first to fly with a heavier-than-air machine, but boy did they have a lousy plane"
I have all seasons on my computer (it took up many many gigs).
www.lando.co.uk has the entire episode catalog for download.
get em while its still up!
Well, they can just Bite My Shiny Metal ASS!!!
doesn't carry Futurama unfortunately (i have no idea why, the simpsons and m in the middle are on every sunday)....so i've been missing out anyhow
Futurama is quite simply one of the most intelligent, witty, funny, and creative animated series in the history of TV. If Fox is so stupid as to cancel this gem, I will promptly boycot all Fox programming.
mje0w!!!1!
...Does anybody know how this would affect the planned upcoming DVD sets?
Fox did pretty well for themselves by the Season 1 DVDs of "The Simpsons," and I remember rumblings that "Futurama" would follow not too far behind.
It'd be a shame if these disappear, too; the commentaries on the Simpsons discs were as amusing as the shows themselves, and the Futurama crew has always struck me as being a bit sharper in their wit.
At least Fox is still putting out quality programming like "That 80s Show" and "Temptation Island 2," right? I mean, right? Who's with me?
Instead, petition UPN to pick it up. They have a history of picking up other networks' shows (Buffy, Roswell, etc.) and this one would fit in well with its lineup.
The address:
UPN Entertainment
11800 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, CA 90025
IMHO, this is the show's best hope.
Why is it called COMMON sense when so few people have it?
I won't lift a finger to help save it though. I leanred my lesson trying to save Mystery Science Theator 3000.
You can't fight the man.
I've hit Karma 50 and gotten a Score:5, Troll... I win!
Sure, raise a big fuss over Futurama. Family Guy (also on Fox, and a much funnier and much better show than Futurama) was cancelled and I didn't see jack on here about it. It's nice to know that the "journalists" on here take it upon themselves to champion the shows they find amusing while leaving other things conveniently unmentioned.
Linux is so bad it's free and most people don't use it. But you have the source code, so it's your fault.
After you sign the petition go back to the 1st page and hit refresh a few time over a couple min and watch the counter go up. i watched it go from 3092 to 3192+ in just a couple minuets. can almost watch the slashdotting.
I find it very difficult to give much credibility to any sort of voice of mass opinion that runs through petitiononline. To be swayed by public opinion, I'd think that a decision maker would be far more impressed by a deluge of written letters, phone calls, signed stacks of papers, etc...not some guestbook-like site where the effort to create and spout off casual desires is negligible, and the result is a forwarded URL announcing the results that can be ignored in a heartbeat. Also questionable is the security measures in place to prevent multiple votes and unreliable results.
That said, I'm pretty indifferent to whether Futurama continues. It was usually pretty funny, but never caught me in quite the same way the Simpsons still does. Don't know why.
I'm sure FOX will be interested to know that there are lots of people out there who don't want the show to get cancelled. But are these people actually faithful watchers of the show? If there were really hoards of people watching the show then the ratings would reflect it, and it wouldn't be getting cancelled. And not to be particularly cynical, but will all these people who just signed the petition actually go watch it every Sunday for the rest of the season??
When I read this I thought "no way, they can't cancel that show, it's great"... but I have to honestly say that I maybe watch it 1 out of every 4 or 5 times it's on...
The way to petition for TV shows is with your remote, not your pen (or keyboard).
Joining the shit heap of crap animation, including Family Guy, Clerks - The Animated Series and Dilbert. At least it might leave room for something worth watching.
Matt Groening thought up The Simpsons in 15 minutes, moments before pitching it to Fox. Doesn't mean he could do it again.
Funny, I think they only had what... two episodes this year? How can it get bad ratings when they never show it?
As of now the number of signers on the petition is rising at about 100 sigs a minute.
:)
Cool
So there's 4 seasons. Isn't that enough?
Some of the best things come in small doses - take Fawlty Towers, for example, one of the funniest sitcoms ever, and they only made 12.
John Cleese said he put everything it needed in those 12 episodes.
If you can live with 'only' 4 seasons of Futurama, perhaps the writers will come up with something better.
Please, have somebody go through and fix all the spelling errors, and generally edit the petition. It looks sort of sloppy.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
WATCH the damned thing. Shows, even shitty ones, don't get cancelled if people WATCH them. If the show gets cancelled, it's because you aren't putting your viewing habits where your mouth is!
I am as big a "fan" of Futurama and Family Guy as the next person. But when push comes to shove, there's other things on TV I'd rather watch more.
That's why they've been cancelled. Fox needs shows that people will watch, and that means being BETTER than the stuff on the other two (three, counting CBS) networks.
Will he resurrect the Simpsons to what it once was?
I hate to see Futurama go, it one of the best shows on right now. With the demise of Family Guy as well, all we have left is the Simpsons. I'd like to know what they have up their sleeve. They've cancelled the two best shows there currently is, so what will they replace it with?
Probably more sports and primetime movies although I believe sports channels and movie channels should be the ones who supply us with that kind of TV!
I wonder how many people are signing the petition to save Futurama, who don't watch the show.
Consider, best case scenario:
- 80 gazillion people sign the petition.
- FOX says, "Great Googly-moogly! We didn't know we had all these viewers. Keep Futurama on the air!"
- Futurama stays on the air
- After a year, ratings, surveys, etc. reveal that, as FOX originally thought, only 80 people actually watch Futurama.
- FOX yanks Futurama.
- FOX never listens to a petition again.
If you are signing the petition, but have not and will not watch the show, you're really not helping.
ShoutingMan.com
great idea!! lets slashdot the petition!
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Even when they do tell you it's on, you'll wind up watching about 20 minutes of post-game football followed by 10 minutes of Futurama "already in progress".
They probably want the space for "that 90s show".
...I just hope they don't cancel Family Guy, which is much, MUCH funnier. Futurama was always a show hanging onto the coattails of the once-incredible but now-abyssmal Simpsons.
[ home ]
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2002 21:29:08 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) mod_perl/1.25
mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a
SLASH_LOG_DATA: shtml
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
X-Fry: It's like a party in my mouth and everyone's throwing up.
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
There aint no pancake so thin it doesn't have two sides.
But that show always sucked. Yes there were a few things like bender which made it occasionally funny, but overall compared to Simpons or Family Guy it was kinda lame. And believe me based on the people behind it I was as big a fan of anyone when it first came out, but it just never got that good.
BTW how bad does Enterprise suck. I've been a trek fan for eons, and I just can't stomach their pale impersonations of former trek cast members. I especially hate the captian and his sidekick. They bring bad acting to new heights, and make me ashamed that I am a fan of Quantum Leap. They only saving grace was that hot vulcan, although their exploitation of her especially in that episode when she and what's his name had be "decontaminated" was just pathetic.
Ugggh I can't believe I can no longer stomach my favorite show!!!!
...has a history of murdering its good shows (Family Guy, Futurama, Get a Life) while letting once-good shows languish (X-Files, the Simpsons, Ally McFucking Beal).
People wonder why they're still the number 4 network; I don't.
- A.P.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
You can't fight the man.
I'm going to be half-serious here...
Dammit, that's what The Man wants you to think! The Man wants you to just sit down, shut up, and take whatever you get fed. You're not supposed to stand up with others who agree with you and say you want something to change, or stay the same. That would be interaction - and Big Media can't have that, beyond what little scraps the plebes get thrown with "online polls", "bulletin boards", and stupid contests.
Try, man! Stand up and try! MST3K fans may have failed, but that doesn't mean they'll always fail.
Hey, a mass letter-writing campaign worked for Star Trek. I'm sure us Futurama nerds can come up with some contemporary equivalent.
FIGHT THE POWER!
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
You know, the scene where Marge and Homer are sitting in bed, watching a television program with a porno soundtrack. Marge turns to Homer and says "You know, Fox became a porno channel so gradually, nobody realized what was happening."
668: Neighbour of the Beast
"...the show has given us much happyness and joy..."
"Many of us watch the show with friends and believe it has vast quantitiys of potential and has an almost never ending amount of fresh possiblitiys."
"...one of the most inivative, clever, funnny and entertaing
I mean, come ON. If a FOX exec reads this, he/she will think it was written by a bunch of semi-literate cretins and the petition will not be taken seriously.
That said, I did sign the petition, and will be sad if Futurama is indeed cancelled.
Fox turned into a hard core porn channel so gradually no one even noticed.
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
So how is slashdoting an online petition any diferent from Microsoft rigging a poll? Slashdot is reaching new lows.
(relax it's a joke)
Pedro Côrte-Real.
So it's going to get cancelled
Actually, we could say the cancellation process is already there. They just aired 4 episodes so far in this season.
I really can't understand Fox. Futurama is really good, it didn't get in the repititive/appelative stage where the Simpsons is ye (don't get me wrong, I'm a big Simpsons fan too, I just think it's time to pull the plug and move on to the big screen), and now they are cancelling it (while I bet the Simpsons will still survive for a couple of years). I just hope they don't cancel King of the Hill too..
Between the time I first visited the page, and the time I finished filling out my info, it went from 3098 signatures to 3912. I hope this works, because I really enjoy the show ( although my wife insists I watch without her, its humour is apparently lost on her )
max inglis
So how much does it cost to make an episode of Futurama, anyway? That is probably one of the key questions in determining if Cartoon Network or possibly Comedy Central picks it up.
Also, there may be legal issues. Some shows are made by outside companies and can switch networks when contracts expire or are terminated (e.g., Buffy). Others are made by the networks themselves, and don't have a prayer of ever moving to a channel not owned by that network. Is there any confirmation that Futurama is produced under a contract that will allow them to go to another network?
Just questions. Too bad I can't post the answers.
7 PM EST sunday night? Talk about a toss it and forget it time slot! Half the episodes get preempted(and cancelled for the night) by sports events, award shows that we don't care about, etc
If you gave Futurama the 8:30 slot(currently in use by Malcom in the Middle, directly after the Simpsons), Futurama would do a lot better ratings wise.
-Henry
"Useless organic meatbag" -HK-47
I guess I just wanted to write about it. I kinda had the feeling this would happen. I and many with me loves this show, but they haven't ordered more. I don't like many shows, and most I start to find boring before I come to the 10th episode. I still get all excited when there is a new Futurama out. I've seen them all, I ordered my Futurama DVD Box today (already got the Simpsons one of course) and I hunger for more. And this is what happens. I hope they move both Simpsons and Futurama to a nicer network, but I do wonder what will happen with the DVDs then.
Life is unfair...
-John
How can Futurama be cancelled and King of the Hill be left on?
They just need to get Futurama in a good time slot and keep it there.
no more jacking on for Bender I guess
I mean, if you offered to pay them money (big money) to keep the show on, that would be something, but why is there any reason to believe that they'd keep a show just because some people ask them nicely? If enough people actually watched the show it would be a different story.
It's dubious how much a network pays attention to these sort of online petitions, but it would greatly improve your chances if you spellchecked the petition first. And then have 10 people proofread it.
happyness?
quantitiys?
possibilitiys?
inivative?
funnny?
entertaing?
unfinnished?
interupting?
And "Simpsons" should be capitalized as well. The networks probably won't listen anyway, but you might as well not give them specific excuses for discarding your petition.
If Futurama is getting low ratings, it's for two reasons:
;)
1. Fox plays it at 7 PM. I'd always figured it would slip into the 8 PM spot when the Simpsons ended and quickly jump in ratings.
2. Futurama viewers are not "average enough" to become Nielson viewing households. College students and Slashdot readers aren't "average" citizens. The "average" people are the ones that keep shows like "The View" and "WWF RAW" on the air.
People shape laws. Not the other way around.
And it goes on like that, night after night! Why would they want to air a clone of a successful Fox show like The Simpsons, when they can air "That 80's Show"? And have you seen the fan base behind "Grounded for Life"? You can't do a single search on Morpheus without tripping over DivX episodes of that runaway hit. And let's not forget the lucrative DVD revenues from "Titus"!
Basically, there's no place for Futurama in the Fox lineup anymore. Saturday night is locked down with "Human Scum TV", craftily filling in the space between COPS and America's Most Wanted with COPS reruns! So what are they going to do? If only Fox was running three other humorous adult animation shows to fill out the rest of two hours, perhaps they'd be able to create some sort of thematically unified lineup, but where would they find three shows like that on short notice?
This seems to be a standard tactic of Fox's; put a show in a crappy timeslot, watch the rating plummet (or never go anywhere in the first place), then cancel it for the bad ratings.
I would love to say that I've seen the Tick (live-action), but I NEVER saw an ad for it once the show had started; I saw plenty of "coming soon" ads, but NOTHING once it was out, so I never knew when it was on. Kinda lazy of me, I know, but most of the time I only turn the TV on when something good is on, and I don't have a TV guide or such.
For that matter, anyone remember Space: Above and beyond? Totally kickass show IMHO, and they advertised the fuck out of it before it aired. But once it started, they started using a fucked-up random number generator to decide the times, EVERY WEEK. I only saw the first couple episodes, cuz they moved it around so much I couldn't keep track, forgot, or was given the wrong time by the TVGuide. Royally pissed me off, and the show was cancelled mid-season, IIRC.
I'd love to say we can save Futurama, but I just don't think it's gonna happen; the almighty Network Executives(tm) have passed the decision, and it's gonna take an act of God to get them to change their minds.
Just putting in my 2 cents. Save Futurama. The more geeks that reply to this story, the better.
------
Today's Top Deals
yep, that was funny, hopefully the karma whore mods aren't all browsing at 5
Fox is going to cancel Futurama and keep "King of the Hill" on TV?! This has long been a problem for me: how is it possible that "King of the Hill" has survived for all this time? My only explanation before was that it had a great time slot (between Futurama and Simpsons). But if Fox is now claiming that Futurama doesn't get good enough ratings to stay on, how is it possible that "King of the Hill" has managed to stay around?!
I couldn't tell if you were experimenting with poor-man's cryogenics or looking for the orange sherbet.
Stop pitting Futurama against The Simpons and other cool shows.
For crying out loud, if FOX ever had a wide open time slot it should be 3rd Rock's spot. Does anyone get that show?
At the very least we can pray that it isn't replaced with yet another reality tv show.
I'm still finding IQ points around the house just from the hearing the commercials.
I gave myself to Jesus, but now he never calls
Too many of the gags were only appreciated by a small number of people. While that makes it endearing to us, it goes over the head of Joe Sixpack.
I honestly feel that part of the reason why Futurama hasn't built up a huge fan base is because FOX never gave it a chance.
To start things off, when Futurama was created by Matt Groening, FOX was joyous. The Simpsons were a huge hit, and FOX thought anything else by the hand of Matt Groening would be just as big a hit...as long as it was just like the Simpsons. The problem was that Groening didn't want that.
I wish I had remembered what magazine it was, but there was an article back in 1998 which explained the creation of Futurama. When Groening told FOX that it was either his way or no way, FOX was real close to saying no, but the ratings they were getting from the Simpsons was too good to let go. Even then, there was a lot of clash between FOX and Groening in the development of Futurama, mostly because FOX wanted a Simpsons knockoff.
When Futurama hit the air, guess who first watched it? Simpsons fans, and pretty much ONLY Simpsons fans, because FOX advertised it that way. "From the creator of the Simpsons..." was emphasized more than "A New show...". Many Simpsons fans who were expecting a knockoff stopped watching it when they realized it wasn't, and many others left because they wern't used to a different kind of comedy (Simpsons had the same problems during the first two seasons, but they won it out).
Well, when you have a drop in the original fan base, and no increase in a new fanbase, ratings fall. When ratings fall, the show gets preemted for shows with higher ratings. The third season of Futurama didn't start until the second week of November, and this season didn't start until the third week. Even then, we've only seen four-or-so new episodes, since as Cheesemaker said, NFL has otherwise preemted Futurama.
FOX is making a big mistake if they cancel Futurama, especially because they just haven't made the effort to promote it to new people (rather than just Simpsons fans). When I visited Norway last summer, I found out that many of the teenagers (at least in southern Norway) love Futurama, even more than the Simpsons, because Fry's character reflects that of a typical 20th century high school kid.
Just for the record, I hope everyone realizes that each decade has at least one show that the TV execs thought was a failure, but instead became a big hit in syndication. The Brady Bunch made it only through five seasons, Giligans Island only survived for three, and need I remind everyone that Star Trek only sailed the skies for four?
My only wish is that FOX doesn't give the same fate to Futurama.
its the dude from Conan.. it should be worth cancling futurama for.
--
WHO ATE MY BREAKFAST PANTS?
...in the time it took me to "sign" it, the count went from 4099 to 4214. And in the time it took me to go from there to here, and post this, it's gone to 4368. I mean 4379. I mean 4387.
___
The way to see by faith is to shut the eye of reason. --Ben Franklin
Don't cancel it, just rename it to match the other fine, fine programming on FOX.
Some potential winners:
- Temptation Spaceship 5
- When Aliens Attack
- Who Wants to Marry a One-Eyed Woman?
- Bender in the Middle
- That 2970's Show
Might there be a connection?
Try out fish, the friendly interactive shell.
Just to be rational, I'd like to know two things:
1) What is the highest total of online signatures a TV show has recevied on this or similar websites.
2) Did it matter?
------
Today's Top Deals
Microsoft. They could ask all their employees to sign it a few hundred times each. Surely this is more important than some crummy online survey!
There goes my will to live. What the hell am I supposed to watch now, not having cable and such? Andromeda? Yeah, right.
I watched "Futurama" for a while. I have to admit that it was (usually) funnier than "The Simpsons" was at the same time. (But, let's face it, my old college roommate after a few beers is funnier than "The Simpsons" has been in the last few seasons.) And sometimes, usually when it was making fun of some current or not-so-current event, it achieved a cockeyed kind of greatness (e.g. the _Titanic_ parody, or the episode where Bender does a Joe Hazelwood, only by not drinking.)
But "Futurama" was a mean, nasty little show in comparison to "The Simpsons" at its best. "The Simpsons" in its early seasons was wicked, but it never lost sight of the essential humanity of its characters. Homer was dumb and often small-minded, but he'd occasionally come through and do the right thing. Lisa was there to remind us that even the worst of families can sometimes produce something right. Hell, even Bart had his moments.
But "Futurama" had nothing but contempt for its characters. Fry has never been anything else but an idiot. Bender is...well, Bender; if he ever deviates from his cruel, mean-spirited ways, it's for the sake of a cheap joke. Leela provides some counterbalance, I suppose, but more often than not the show seems bent on finding some way to humiliate her (qq.v. any episode with Zapp Brannigan, the "Married with Children" parody episode.)
Hey, but if you get your kicks from cruelty masquerading as comedy, then you'll be sorry to see "Futurama" go. I won't be.
hyacinthus.
I love Futurama. But let's face it, Fox has blundered into their best business decisions. For every one series or idea Fox gets right, there are 10 to 20 financed from the profits that fail in their first month. There are no big brains at work at Fox Networks. Sure, they got a couple things right in backing a couple wildly popular shows. But even a blind hog gets an acorn once in a while. Or in this case, a million blind monkeys at work on a million typewriters can produce the entire Fox fall lineup.
best web host ever
The Family Guy is another very hilarious Fox show, and apparently they are canceling it too. If you want to sign a petition go here.
(i just wanted to use that subject line.)
~jeff
let me be the wet blanket that says Futurama should be let go quietly. It was past it's due date, and well, sometimes you have to let go.
-dB
"It if was easy to do, we'd find someone cheaper than you to do it."
Futurama is cool and all, but I'd rather watch the 'Fear Factor with Hentai Anime' thing.
n
God is real unless declared integer.
National CyberCrime Prevention Foundation
Futurama has never been as subtle or subversive as The Simpsons in its prime - especially the Conan O'Brian years. However, The Simpsons' last few seasons have really slipped.
And why is King of the Hill still on? Does Fox have an ownership stake? Do they make money on syndication? If they gave Futurama the 7:30 slot, then KotH would have been NFLed to death instead. It seems like that show was done animated just Mike Judge wanted to. Live action would have worked as well.
Futurama's just damed funny. I laugh out loud every time I think of Dr. Zoidberg's homeworld's national anthem (LOL as I type).
P.S. Damn Fox and the NFL!
The power of a swift slashdotting will become omnipresent!
Watch the total number of signatures increase by the hundreds!
Amaze your friends!
"Peace, Love and Apathy"
It Seems Most ./"s have No Idea Family Guy Has been cancelled For Next Season. Fox Is airing what it has Left. Check out http://animatedtv.about.com/ For more info.
As a Side note: Family Guy was always Much Funnier IMHO. Im alot sadder to see that go than Futurerama
I know they dont have the money really, but it would be great if the bbc could buy the episodes. I would always watch. Plus there would be no adverts. (In the UK, the simpsons and futurama are on various different channels, and on the channels with adverts the episodes get edited to hell. We've lost some of the best jokes that way.)
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
Bring back Beavis and Butthead :)
hehe
"When we found out that the show has been cancelled we were surprised because there is a huge fan base for the show and it has a large online following too. Many of us watch the show with friends and believe it has vast quantitiys of potential and has an almost never ending amount of fresh possiblitiys."
Fox would probably take the petetion more seriously if it wasn't written so poorly. Run-on sentences, typographical errors, and misspelled words take away credibility from an otherwise noble cause.
"They have computers and other weapons of mass destruction" -US Attorney General Janet Reno
I was eerily reminded of the gameshows like those in 'The Running Man.'
You know, I almost said the same thing in my first reply, but I figured the reference wasn't quite exact. In the Running Man, the contestant could at least fight back and run. "The Chamber" was more like a 1984-esque Miniluv interrogation scene writ bizarre. I half-expected the host to offer the poor woman a roast beef sandwich with mustard during a break in the torture.[0]
What ever happened to the other torture show, The Chair? Cancelled as well?
[0] Ok, let's see who can identify that obscure reference.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
i hate tv. if you tape one of these shows and watch it in fast forward you'll know what i mean. 30 minutes show means 20 minutes of ads and 10 minutes of what is on the tv guide. no thank you. that's why i don't bother with cable/satallite/what-have-you. just news please. recently i've even stopped watching the news even. it's nothing short of cliffhangers full of sansationalism -- "an area women gives birth to seven headed green baby; news at 9". or "investigative reports!! 25 lifers are on the loose -- your life may be in danger -- news at 10". if my life was in danger, i'd really fucking appriciate them telling me now. who knows i may get my throat slit before 10. what a bunch of retards. TV has become an updatable billboard that people pay to get into their homes. someone's gonna have to pay me to get one of these things into my living room.
any rumours about a DVD release of the episodes?
(Considering Simpsons first season was released recently...This would be an excellent thing for those of us who want to re-live the best moments.)
the show has given us much happyness and joy
Spell checking is still too hard for some people that it must take away their "happyness".
After 600+ posts and 20 articles, my karma has been peaked at 50 for what seems like forever now. My new campaign: Karma Suicide!! Every post from now until my karma's back at zero will be this short crapflood posted with my +1 bonus. So moderators: Do your worst! Mod me troll/flame/OT/Overrated/Whatever to get my karma back to where it began. Do this ASAP! And as for the rest of you, commit karma suicide today!
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
Come on, Futurama was easily as funny as The Simpsons, with added nerdy jokes which slashdot type people would get!
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
I felt it important to do because my tastes are not mainstream and if I don't make my interests known no one will cater to me. I did watch Futurama on Sunday night and it did go in my little log. I bring this up because I wonder how many Slashdotters watch Futurama, enjoy Futurama, but blew off a similiar caller because they didn't want to deal with the hassle or privacy issues.
I signed the petition, but perhaps what Futurama really needs is a network that will actually give it a chance, instead of giving it a shitty timeslot and pre-empting it at every oppourtunity. The Simpsons did not magically become the longest running, most popular sitcom on TV! It took years of promotion, network support, and character development. Unfortunately though, you can't sell a product that you don't believe in.
That's because it sucks ass...
To be quite honest, while I love shows like The Family Guy and Futurama, I question how much petitions like this do. True, they gave it a terrible timeslot, but the real "petition" is to watch it (although without a Nielsen box it doesn't do much).
I mean, looking through the petitions on petitiononline.com, we see:
1337 sp3ak in 5(}{00l !!
A petition to the WWF in honor of the Undertaker
Let's Import Japan
A bit hard to take this seriously, especially considering how little effort it takes to sign a petition. A bigger noise would be made by sending postcards, that would fill their mailboxes.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
I can't believe that Futurama has been on and people haven't been watching it. They stopped showing Futurama where I live halfway through the second series. I've had to get it off the 'net.
Well that depends. If there are enough letters that threaten to boycott fox entirely that may have the effect of reducing ratings across the board for fox. For a struggling network every point does count. Of course people organizing a boycott like that would be acting very unfairly towards fox.
Another possibility is that an online petition can suggest ways of improving the show in order to attract a broader audience. That may also make fox change its mind.
Also, a petition can show that a particular show has a faithful following, and replacing it with something else may be risky. That is, who's to say that its replacement will be any more popular?
-Johan
Oh, come on. I get like 800 channels on digital cable. There's got to be like 60 cooking shows on right now. If Groening wants to put in the effort for less money he can definitly sell this baby to Cartoon Network or the SciFi Channel(they even picked up Earth Final Conflict without realizing it had not yet died). But i kinda think he's too greedy.
who else thinks Leela is sexy?
Slashdot, you suck. I don't care how this is modded.
I submitted almost this EXACT TYPE OF NEWS STORY about Family Guy ( Which is 100% funnier than Futurama ) and I got rejected so fast I still have the skid marks on my ass.
At the time, I figured that it was because Family Guy isn't technically a geek thing ( by some people's standards ). And now I see this. Bleh.
For those of you out there who *DO* care about Family Guy, you need to see the petition located here. You can also get info on snail-mail and pickiting here.
PS - Futurama isn't BAD, I just don't find it nearly as funny.
Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote.
Worst, cancellation, ever!
"You know, Fox turned into a Hard core sex channel so gradually, I didn't even notice."
- Marge
no comment
I love the smell of Karma in the morning
Here's a hint; it wasn't a movie.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Well look to the past, the original star trek was canceled for years before the many letters of fans ressurected it. I doubt however, that a web petition will mean anything, writen letters have a much better chance.
What signature defines me as a person?
THERE IS A GOD! That assinine show, otherwise known as Futurama has BEEN cancelled!
Is there any reason why this extra-moronic show should NOT be cancelled for anything else?
even the grass growing show would be better! woohoo!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
--- C00l
Wait.... ...wrong show.
Malike Bamiyi wanted my assistance.
I will promptly boycot all Fox programming
By doing this you will surely crush their empire!!
Umm....let's see here.
Football is the reason that futurama is being cancelled. The NFL stomped on the show like 10-11 weeks in a row.
Some of use NEVER even got to watch it.
I only got to see it just this LAST Sunday. Every other week it was some football game running into "false overtime".
If the audience isn't allowed to see the show, how can we support it? e.g. watch the silly commercials in between...?
- Life is what keeps you occupied while you are waiting to die
to quote from there LMAO
To: Japan
The unanimous Declaration of the gamers, otakus, and other words that mean the same things:
WHEREAS Japan makes the coolest motherfucking shit, and
WHEREAS mankind, empowered by science, is not unlike the Gods spoken of in Legend, and
WHEREAS, I mean, how hard could it be,
LET IT BE RESOLVED that we should *totally* Import the entire Island nation of Japan.
Sincerely,
The Undersigned
We need PHYSICAL ADDRESSES people! No one listens to online petitions or e-mail! Snail mail letters is the way! Someone find addresses of actual PEOPLE that we can mail at FOX. Quickly, Quickly. This is one of the best shows on television, I have no idea what FOX is smoking.
Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually make my website for other people to look at.
It's doubtful that Futurama or Family Guy could make the transition to cable using their current production methods. According to one Family Guy FAQ, the average production cost of each episode is $1.1 million (U.S.). While that's peanuts for network television (for example, Friends' 6 primary cast members are almost making that much an episode per 'Friend'), 1.1 mil is still outside the reach of most cable outlets. In all probability, Futurama probably costs more due to the 3-d effects employed in its animation, and also has a higher profile voice cast (Billy West, Katey Sagal, and John Dimaggio [who won the Annie this year for best voice actor]). So the only chances of Futurama's survival are Fox or another network.
You're only as smart as your brain.
DINGfuckinglamenessfilterDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGDINGD INGDINGDING!
Give the man a bong hit.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
It's been painfully unfunny from the first episode. Good riddance!
Working on a stint for Disney, I worked on lot of television shows. Trust me, email campagins don't mean didley. If you want to make an impressiion, write a letter. Letters, I believe, are considered to be represenative of 30,000 viewers, whereas emails are something like 10, or maybe lower than that. (maybe one, truthfully)
But also understand, there might be other reasons for a show's cancellation which might have nothing to do with the show taking in ad revenue. For example, Le Femme Nitka was cancelled, but it was making a fine profit. It just wasn't making enough of a profit, and also, I think they grew tired of it.
There needs to be a way that we, the community,
can decide what shows we get to watch as opposed
to a small number of executives which make
decisions based on how much profit they can make
from us.
Yea verily, there is a place for canceled animated satire. It is called Adult Swim, and it is on Cartoon Network on Sundays, and already it has become a home for Baby Blues, Home Movies, Mission Hill, and the Oblongs. Unfortunately...
1) Cartoon Network is part of Time-Warner, which isn't on good terms with Fox. (Same problem with Comedy Central though).
2) Cartoon Network and Adult Swim are not well known with the mainstream adult audience, although they should be.
3) Cartoon Network doesn't have the cash for expensive shows, hence their reliance on low budget original shows and syndicated cancelled ones. They could afford to pick up existing Futurama episodes, but probably not make new ones.
---If you can't trust a nerd, who can you trust?
Futurama was pretty funny sometimes. I'm sad to see it go and hope another network picks it up.
I really liked the Tick. I thought the dialog was well done and Patrick's delivery was great. Here again, I would like to see another network pick it up, but I doubt either will happen.
I hate the family guy and wish it would just die, but it still keeps coming back like a bad case of jock itch.
Fox sucks!
Bite my Shiny metal ass....FOX
The problem is FOX has major sports, thats where they believe the money is.
Hopefully another station will start doing what FOX did to get its rating up, and that is running cutting edge, and chancy, tv shows.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
I'm surprised no one here can figure out why all these shows are getting cancelled. Just take one look at the ratings and you'll see why. When networks go to see which shows are good shows, they don't go around asking for opinions of the show they look at the ratings to see who is watching what. All of these shows had virtually no viewers (a million or so viewers in a prime time spot is virtually nothing. A signature campaign doesn't work because all those signatures come out of those million or so viewers plus people who will sign anything. The only thing that could save those shows is if suddenly 6 or 7 million people began to watch them). Although some of that is stupidity (Why FOX put Family Guy up against Survivor and Friends and expected it to do well is beyond me... If you want to save a show, just track down a couple thousand people with the tv rating boxes, and force them to watch the shows you like.
To me it seems almost like while the Simpsons is loosing a great amount of its humor that it once had (namely because Groening left for Futurama), Futurama is becoming stronger and funnier every season. So its completely ridiculous to cancel a show like this while leaving on such dreck as Ally McBeal and Malcolm in the Middle....And btw I've seen Family Guy and it doesn't seem as good as Futurama to me.
It was Wired Magazine that had the interview. I recall because it was one of the very rare occasions when I actually bought a copy.
Even if it wasn't after football, going up against 60 minutes is a lousy spot. They ought to put it after the Simpsons and put Malcolm in the middle someplace very far away...
I am not a number! I am a man! And don't you
UPN may be the best hope, though I'm not sure anybody is going to set up the petition..
Won't somebody think of the children?!
"Peace, Love and Apathy"
Maybe we should all agree the day to send the letters to fox? That's what the Roswell guys did, we'll have to see if that works. But, the idea of having all the letters arrive all at once so they look all the more impressive strikes me as quite a nifty one :)
maybe now they can get back to their senses and move Family Guy to the newly opened time slot.
Hey, I'm no Anglo-centrist, but it seems to me that a petition like this would be taken more seriously if it wasn't loaded with spelling and grammatical errors. "What kind of people would think something like this is important?" you might ask. The kind of people who would cancel a great show like Futurama. Seriously, good spelling and grammar will get you a lot further.
Even if the shows (Futurama and Family Guy) do get cancelled, I hope to hell that the DVD's are made available in NA. Region encoding by The Man is keeping me down...that at a little PAL/NTSC problem.
Futurama and The Family Guy were 2 of the only shows I watched on TV. Next thing you know, Junkyard Wars will be axed.
Don't mean to be a troll, but this matters exactly how? It's _television_, which is by definition meaningless.
And hey, I spent six months working as a contractor at FOX. Trust me - it' a miracle anything at all actually makes it onto the air, much less rational decisions made about _what_ gets on the air.
Kill your television.
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" - BF
The real reason Futurama isn't more popular? Because Fox keeps pre-empting the show for football (what is the FOX Sports channel for? Knitting?) and because it is on too early. Having that that lame 'King of the Hill' on between Futurama and Simpsons is a really bad scheduling error that FOX should have corrected long ago.
dose any slashdotter out there have a Nielsen box?
to me theve always been those mysterious things people in the northeast have...
people...dont waste you breath getting fox or any other network to do anything....they only listen to what 5000 people with mysterious black boxes say.
....all I have left now is King of the Hill,
"I tell you what".... and Enterprise (just kidding!)
And the only reason I watched both Futurama and
Family Guy, besides the fact that they were the best written shows out there, was because of P2P .
Never could remember where they shuffled the shows but could find them online in a heartbeat.
FG was unapoligetically topical at times; I was sure that they were gonna get the boot the first year when they had Peter tell a jew and an arab that they all looked the same to him. Im suprised they didnt get yanked off during the commercial break.
To FOX credit, they've cancelled a lot of good shows but none of these shows would have ever aired on the lame networks (which get a woody once a year when Friends have a non-white special appearance).
I thought that the short lived 'Action' was an amazing satire of the Hollywood scene...except
it wasnt a satire.
Say..does anyone know if 'Ellen' is still around?
Its amazing how long crap floats when the execs try to cater to niche markets.
TV answers to one god only: ratings. You can write letters forever, and you'll only grow old.
they send it. I mean, just proof it, y'know? Someone want to let them know about that?
Three seasons for ST, actually.
79 episodes, and into history.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
Its kind of funny... theres a quote from the simpsons xfiles episode where homer goes "Yeah and people don't believe me, we can just sell it to the fox network." and Bart follows up with "yeah they'll buy anthing". Haha... the sad thing is fox always cancels their best shows... the family guy is the best cartoon since simpsons and southpark. Hilariously random. Futurama was alright, I wasn't a big watcher... but alot of people swear by it. The critic was awesome, thank god ccentral picked up it on syndicate. The tick was alright... i watched one episode and it did make me laugh. Anyway, the point as if i had one... i think fox doesn't know whats good on its channel. They seem to be trying please all demographics except the 15-35 year old white male one, which lets be honest is definitly what adult cartoons are more aimed for. Its sad...
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
The time slot and priority given to Futurama has domed it to ratings failure from its onset. It gets preempted for anything and gets stuck at the ass end, in this case the beginning, of the Sunday line-up.
While many Simpsons fans don't enjoy Fry and the gang as much as Bart and Homer, I haven't met one that doesn't like the show. And I have liked Futurama better than the Simpsons for the last couple of years for that matter, though the Simpsons has gotten better again. What genius at Fox hasn't realized that if the two were tied more closely together, at least for a while, Futurama would benefit from the cross over appeal. I know I'd stick around and watch Futurama in the 7:30 (Central) time slot instead of that monstrosity of a sitcom, Malcom in 'F-ing' the Middle.
Anyone else here wanna kick in that Framkie Mun-whatevers teeth in?
you need to invent yourself a life!
Unfortunately, being among the majority of people in the known Universe, I don't get 1000 channels to choose from, so unless it's going to be on terrestrial or Sky One (which already has constant reruns of The Simpsons, 3-4/day ffs) or so, the closest me and 10 million other Brits are going to get to seeing it is a dodgy DivX :(
.rm format, and about 3 DivXed episodes after that.
So far I've seen the first series cut very badly on Channel 4, the first two in crappy
Futurama is one of the best shows I've seen in a while. The jokes were funny, or at least mildly amusing, and I regularly tuned in to watch it when I could.
Where's your bathroom?
Bath-what?
Bathroom
What-room?
BATHROOM!
What-what?
aah, never mind.
Oh, and series one of Futurama is available on DVD in the UK since last week. I just finished watching the whole thing...hehe, I forgot how good that "I, roommate" episode was.
soory, I don't speak english... I'am hungarian men. Futurama rulez! Don't enough!!!
I'm surprised only one person mentioned Invader Zim in all this. It has never been promoted, and Nick (which hasn't shown a new ep. since halloween) is holding supposed last ten eps of season one and scaled back season two from a new 20 shows to the 6 completed. It was easily one of the best cartoons on lately, and some weeks, it can still be seen at maybe 1pm on Sundays. There are Two Petitions going on the same site (the second is longer, but the first has about 32,000 more names.) And unlike the family guy reply below, IZ is plenty geekish.
This post, like so much of Creation, is NotArt
If someone else doesn't provide the programming you want then write your own and open source it.
-- SIGFPE
If they'd given this show a half-decent time slot, it would have done so much better. I was really pissed off when it was moved to make room for Malcolm in the Middle (a terrible show in my opinion), and where it currently is, it was pre-empted for football 90% of the time (thank god that foolishness is over for another season).
In my opinion, Futurama is better than the last few seasons of the Simpsons have been... I really hope Fox changes their mind (or at least that a channel like TeleToon picks it up...)
-"One machine can do the work of fifty ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man." -EH
HERE
Futurama
P.O. Box 900
Attn: Futurama
Beverly Hills, CA 90213-0900
Send those letters! Snail mail is the only thing they listen to. Not online petitions or e-mail!
Contrary to popular belief, I don't actually make my website for other people to look at.
With this news in mind, I wonder what the mood is going to be like at the 2002 William S. Paley TV Festival at the end of this month? (Futurama is one of the featured series, and Matt Groening, et al will be present that evening.)
That show is hilarious! It's a good mindless show before I switch over to HBO at 9:00 for whatever is running at the time.
It wasn't that great, anyway. Certainly it doesn't shine a candle to Simpsons or Family Guy.
...I went and signed the online petition to save Futurama, and while I was there put my name to the ones for Family Guy and Undeclared as well.
Anyone noticed that Fox seems to always cancel its good shows, while keeping unfunny shit like Malcolm in the Middle on along with voyeur crapola like Temptation Island?
When they finally do away with *all* the shows I love, I'll have to start referring to Fox as "the good taste takes a holiday" network.
~Philly
MLB and the NFL make huge money for the networks. Advertisers just can't wait to get an ad on during a NFL game, and the same is for baseball in certain areas (i live 1 hour away from NYC). plus, ratings for sports, right now, are pretty much guaranteed. next up is NASCAR, which isn't just for hicks anymore.
it is no different than the 3 or 4 different versions of Battle Bots. people right now will watch.
the WWF is seen more and more now too (books by the wrestlers that show up on NY Times best seller list, music etc)
when the execs find something that works, they beat it to death. Family Guy, Futurama, and that stupid Texas show (don't know the name) are all examples of marginal shows, that only have 1 or 2 seasons of good ideas. in the end, they are cheap copies of what they did with the Simpsons.
it is not just FOX, but all the networks. think Sex and the City spawns Querr as Folk.
If it's so unpopular then why are they making a DVD box set for season 1, which appears to be already available in Europe And also info from the FOX Germany site I guess I need to get a Region 2 DVD player
http://www.kubuntu.org/
Because they've also canceled Family Guy twice already, just to bring it back.
There's also another petition on the same site for saving Family Guy. I figure sign them both, save Fox from going from Shitty Shitty Shitty to Stinky Farty Smelly.
One less reason for me to regret having deactivated cable TV last month.
I saw a somebody post higher up that "jeez it is a cult hit, just like Star Trek...."
C'mon folks. I watched a few episodes of Futurama and while occasionally good, it just wasn't consistantly funny. It was a bit tired from the get go, just like the Simpsons is now. All they need to do now is put the Simpsons to rest. Its getting long in the tooth too. Groenig needs a new schtick, something fresh. Shock cartoons on prime time TV are, thanks to his programs, done to death. Let them die quietly.
Network exec #2: Yeah, and that Groenig guy's from Portland, anyway... Who the hell comes from Portland, for God's sake? And he can't even draw!
Network exec #3: The numbers are sucking, too. That ironic thing is tired. But before we cancel it, we gotta come up with a show for that slot.
Network exec #2: Well, the market surveys say that sincerity and wholesomeness is hot right now but, somehow, bringing back the Osmonds just doesn't seem right.
Network exec #1: But people still like cartoons. I got it! The Family Circus Hour. We could do production in Japan and keep costs down...
Network exec #2: Yeah, but it still has to be a bit edgy. You know, send the mom back to work...
Network exec #3: As a stripper!!! Those Japanese cartoonists could do some nice stuff to Mom's cleavage!
Network exec #2: The stripper's a good touch! It'll get the 14-25 YM demographic.
Network exec #1: Boys, I think we got a real winner here. We'll call it "The Family Circus - Mom's a Stripper - Hour. That's just the working title, of course. Joe, call legal to get us the rights; Jim, call Eddie Johnson to hack us a script together; Bill, call Okutaka-san to set up the anime contract. Marvin, go ahead with the press release saying that we're cancalling that Futurama turkey and get the press rolling for TFCMSH. This new show is going to be ratings heaven!!!!
That is all.
Even as a poor impoverished student I'm sending letters (signed by a few of us) to fox, and I like in europe.
it was pen and paper that brought back the original series of star trek, not a 30 second petition signing.
First Family Guy, now Futurama. Fox seems hell-bent on making sure I never watch their crappy network again. I have religiously watched both of these shows since their inception despite constant preemption, horrible timeslots (Family Guy went up against both Survivor *and* Friends), and lackluster promotion. I even have every episode in MPEG and my friends and I watch them all the time when we can't see new eps/reruns on TV. When people come over and I show them the shows most of them have never even *heard* of Family Guy (or sometimes even Futurama) yet when they leave they love it. I'm tellin' ya, there ain't no justice (tanj!).
Futurama?!? I've been trying to get Chris Elliot's Get a Life back on the air for years.
Now I have two causes to fight for.
!Viva la revolucion!
I'm gonna start my own network! With blackjack...and hookers! In fact, forget the network!
(with all apologies to Futurama)
I heard an interview with a man that worked for a valley (Phoenix) radio station, and he was talking about public feedback. The most surprisingly thing he said was that, in general, stations tend to ignore mass-petitions like the one in the article. The logic behind this was that the people who set forth the petition are making a significant effort to save a show, and this may sway people's opinions. On the other hand, viewers or listeners who take it upon themselves to write into a station are given a significant weight. The amount of weight depends on the number of overall listeners and probably some deep statistical reasoning, but I do know from the anecdote he gave that for 910 KFYI (now 550 KFYI) one individual writing a letter is considered to represent 8,800 people.
Remember, an unsolicited opinion is always better than a solicited opinion. This is the same principle.
So instead of signing the petition, WRITE A LETTER (not e-mail, the old kind of letter where you put a stamp on). If everyone who had signed the petition had written a letter, I can almost guarantee you Fox would put FR back on TV.
Futurama is pur genious, all packaged into a 30 minute spot for our consumption. Its an awesome cartoon, with some really deep humor, especially for us geek types.
I can't believe they're canceling it!! Christ, they haven't had it on the air in any regular schedule for the past year! Of course its probably had poor numbers, nobody ever knows when its going to be on!!! Are things not this obvious to the clowns over at Fox?
I don't watch much TV... it sucks anyway.
Skiers and Riders -- http://www.snowjournal.com
Fox still has TV shows?
er I mean good TV shows
i used to watch it, but for a while it just disappeared, i didn't see any commercials, assumed it was off the air
They also axed the family guy.
The futurama and the cable guy were the best shows on TV!
I never missed an episode.
Maybe the Futurama writers will go back to writing for The Simpsons and save it from being ruined by the current group of monkeys-at-typewriters that have been doing scripts for the show the past few years...
You can expect an asshole who loves Family Guy to hate Futurama.
National CyberCrime Prevention Foundation
"Who Wants to Marry Temptation Island Millionaires in the Chamber... While Animals Attack?"
see subject ;)
But the truth is that Futurama really is extremely similar to the Simpsons. The type of animation is exactly the same. The music's very similar. The voices are similar. The jokes are similar. The whole style, soul and idea of the show is the same. The only thing that's different is the period in time they're supposed to take place. Don't agree? Consider a hypothetical show by the name "Simpsons 3000". Can you imagine such a show not being very very similar to Futurama?
You can argue all you want that Futurama is a great show that should be kept on the air - and I'm all with you - but don't tell me it's not a Simpsons knockoff. Believe me, it is, and it's worth saving anyway.
"If you think education is expensive, try ignorance" - Derek Bok
why the hell cancel good shows like futurama and they replace them with moronic shows such as bernie mac show, temptation island, grounded for life, that 70s/80s show and malcom in the middle.
all of these shows really suck, ever since married with children stopped fox has gone down hill in my opinion, the simpsons plots are getting more and more ridiculous.
and whats with this new puppet show they are advertising, yeah this is a winner, go fox woo hoo
Move Futurama and The Family Guy to the soon-to-be vacated 9:00 sunday night slot. Just more proof that entertainment-by-committee just doesn't work.
I have it on good authority that Fox is replacing Futurama with the XFL.
Hooray!
(Please browse at -1 to read this comment.)
Fox TV and weak ad market weigh on News Corp
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
Although I disagree with Fox about cancelling the show, if they claim bad ratings I'll believe it. Most college students, myself included (and most people on a broadband connection for that matter) have access to file sharing programs like WinMX, Morpheus, etc. One of the neat thing about these programs is that you can download episodes of *gasp* Futurama, as well as the Simpsons, X-files, and other shows big in the /. community. So we've all got the latest episodes downloaded, why even bother turning on the TV? No commercials, we can watch episodes whenever we want, its a digital utopia. But FOX executives are probably looking at the TV ratings, seeing lowered ratings of our favorites (due to this), and canning the shows. The inherent problem here is, people are watching the shows, but not on TV.
I live in Europe. I didn't know about this show until a friend told me about it. Then I went to a.b.m.futurama and started downloading what I could.
This is SERIOUSLY GOOD STUFF! I understand it's huge in Germany, and other parts of Europe where people are fortunate enough to have decent TV stations. Watching Bundesliga soccer, you can see people holding up signs with Bender on them.
I got the 1st season on DVD. Yes, all you USA residents, it did come out in Europe. Go check amazon.co.uk. And it sold out FAAAST!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I don't see the point. This isn't tvguide.com. On the creative side I'm sure it's good entertainment and no doubt a lot of people are sad to see it come to it's end, but it doesn't belong. I know comments get punished here for being off-topic, but why aren't the main authors punished for posting inane stories?
I'm sure it's possible to filter anything marked television, and I'm going to look into that the instant I'm done here. But if you are going to allow digressive news, you shouldn't bill yourself as a nerd site imho. This is just becoming another "post your own favorite interests" site for a bunch of people.
http://about.me/paultenny
People like me watch Family Guy and Futurama. We don't care about the timeslot because we have Tivos, so we don't miss episodes. But, since we have Tivos, we don't watch commercials. Ergo, making stuff I want to see, doesn't pay.
People who watch Temptation Island, do watch commercials, and they download and excecute the code that tells them what to like and buy -- that's the whole reason those people watch that crap in the first place. Ergo, it pays to make crap.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
I'll produce my own Futurama-show... With black jack... And hookers!
:(
In fact, forget the show.
And the black jack.
Aehhh... screw the whole thing!
Opinions stated are mine and do not reflect those of the Illuminati
Hey Bender, will the futurama references be cancelled
from the next version of slashcode too? (gotta stay current!)
/home/person>telnet slashdot.org 80
Trying 64.28.67.150...
Connected to slashdot.org.
Escape character is '^]'.
HEAD / HTTP/1.1
host: slashdot.org:80
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 13 Feb 2002 03:20:08 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.20 (Unix) mod_perl/1.25 mod_gzip/1.3.19.1a
SLASH_LOG_DATA: shtml
X-Powered-By: Slash 2.003000
X-Fry: I'm gonna be a science fiction hero, just like Uhura, or Captain Janeway, or Xena!
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
Connection closed by foreign host.
It's been tainted by a Gore too long to be allowed to survive.
Futurama is one of the few shows that make me glad for the invention of television.
Star Trek was saved from the axe for a few more seasons by a letter writing campaign, so don't think you can't make a difference.
When you sign the petition, let them know that you are going to suggest Cartoon Network pick up Futurama. Then go to Cartoon Network's feedabck page and let them know that you'd like them to pick up the show if Fox drops it!
- Tjp
I am in wallow with my inner money grubbing capitalistic pig. ... Oink!
How much does it cost to produce Futurama? Instead of writing petitions, maybe each of you should throw in $10-20.
It's kind of a pain to write two petitions and have both signed by everyone out there. Can't we just CC: the Fox petition to UPN?
Go back to watching 'Friends,' dorkboy.
When you are you ./ people going to realize that petitions and e-mail have very little impact on executives or politicians?!
For a lot of the decision makers, one signed hand written letter means more than ten thousand e-mails.
This is the way the real world works.....
I used to love this show, then I started missing it when fox started to juggle it around.
Then they had that terrible xmas episode this last year. After watching that episode, I decided I'd never watch the show again. It was just wrong, and this is coming from someone who loves the original south park (the 5 minute short).
I think he summed up my feelings about Futurama:
'It stinks!'
Hah, I'm so funny I could have my own adult oriented animated program on FOX!
Whaddaya expect, it's a dumb show.
Its the only show on TV I can consistantly laugh at. But I'll admit that Im not accually watching it, gotta love Morpheous. It's a TiVo on my computer.
I'm curious as to whether Fox has thought this through more then most of us are willing to admit. Being a faithful fan of both shows it seems to me I've noticed much more creative energy being put into making Futurama, the end result being that the Simpsons has seriously started to lag. While Futurama is a great show, The Simpsons has a much larger, and wider fan base. Fox may be cutting Futurama in an effort to force Groeing to put all his effort back into the Simpsons. Not even sure how much time the man actual spends on either show but it is an idea.
Hells yeah, I refuse to work on Sunday's (granted I have a job now where working on them isn't even an option) because of Football. The question here though shouldn't be whether or not Football should run over; the for the game, there is no reason why it shouldn't.
Look, I know everyone's psyched up to trash Football on this, but the amount of revenue the sport brings in and the amount that Fox/CBS/ABC pays to broadcast it is astronomical. And for those who are saying that Football should be cut off at their respective time slot, you're in the minority in the rest of the US. Check the Nielsens for any week during the NFL season. Aside from "trend" shows (ie. Millionaire at the time, Survivor at the time) Monday Night Football is almost always the highest rated show.
That being said, there are plenty of other time slots out there for Fox to put a show in. Futurama is my favorite show on TV and it pisses me off that Fox would even consider cancelling it. Do we really need to see That 70's Show 5x a week? Yes its also a great show and also one of my favorites, but this type of replay should be saved for Syndication--not prime time viewing. That 80's Show is a piece of trash. Okay, there might be a market for it out there, but that's beside the point. My point is, is that it's not like Fox has hit after hit show on TV. For God's sake, get rid of the atrocity Temptation Island (The First Season bombed when none of the couples broke up, and the Second one sucks because it's obvious they're just throwing everything possible at the couples in an attempt to get some of them to break up). For Prime Time Viewing, there is essentially 10 good hours per week--Sunday-Thursday (8-10). Don't try to tell me that Fox has 10 hours worth of good shows a week.
How about this? Move Malcolm in the Middle (one of their highest rated shows) to another time-slot now that it got its boost from the Simpsons, and put Futurama after the Simpsons for at least a season. That should be good enough to grow your fan-base with a similar style audience. Don't just cancel the damned show because you gave it absolutely no advertising, gave it a horrible time slot, and in that time slot, didn't manage to show it the majority of the time anyway.
Ah well--guess that's why I could never have a Nielsen box. I'd take the job too seriously and go beserk trying to save every show I like.
Oh well, maybe we'll get lucky and another Network would pick it up. Hell maybe even WB, after all--do they really need 10 Dawson's Creek clones?
Slightly off-topic, but since the subject has come to the Simpsons, I must say this.
... "of events?"
HOMR is from last season, probably the last half-decent season the Simpsons will ever see. While Season 12 had more than the normal share of not-very-good episodes, this season has been truly awful. The reason is simple, and his name is Dana Gould.
For those of you who don't know, Dana Gould is a failed stand-up comic who is now taking his lowest common denominator humor to the Simpsons and is singularly responsible for it's current lackluster -- hell, let's just be honest, god-awful humor. Homer getting raped by a panda? Homer finding a corpse as a child? The constant rehashing of previous plot-lines and characters? Say thank you to Dana.
I now find myself tuning in every Sunday night with my fingers crossed, repeating a mantra of "Please don't suck... please don't suck" and for this entire season I have been disapointed. Certainly there were funny jokes. But the Simpsons has turned into stringing forced "big-laughs" into loosely-woven plotlines than generally tend to revolve around celebrities or Homer being an idiot. If you check the 2/10/02 episode, you'll count almost twenty-five producers. 25 producers. Management is strangling the life out of this wonderful series while Dana Gould stomps on its putrifying corpse with his steel-toed jack-boots.
I think Lisa's hypothetical question at the end of the 1/6/02 episode says it all: "Is this the end of our series"
Didn't notice this in anybody's posts.
;))
Received a reply to an inquiry to Marc (Owner of the On-Line Petition) referring me to the site for the Off-Line Letter Writing Campaign here.
[From the site:
Let's face it, this is going to be hard battle and we doubt that online petitions will help much, but we do not want to exclude these options: There is a petition by CGEF going at petitiononline . Click this link to open a new window and sign away. I will wait here till you are done. (Please stop mailing me about the spelling mistakes, I asked petitiononline to correct a few. Bear with me, I'm German
2. This wasn't too hard. But now comes the most important part. You need to write letters. Go buy 6 letters and stamps at the local mall/post office, we have some mailing to do during the next few days. International public, too! Airmail is only a like 1 or 2 euros or equivalent. A letter is worth about 1000 petition entries. Some stuff to include: Hugely popular overseas, potent quality public, never having a chance to grow due to severe time slot sabotage. Have a look at the petition text for hints on what to write and add anything YOU can think of. It's your letter. No excuses for not getting a pen right now! ]
Check if out if you guys are serious about saving the show.
A slashbot actually complaining that there isn't enough advertising.
Hang on while I scrape this ice off satan's windshield.
I am a young, educated professional with pretty hefty chunk of disposable income. Most of my friends are young, educated professionals with a hefty chunks of disposable income. Most of my friends enjoy the same shows I do (things like futurama, family guy, adult swim, and others). Now, as far as I know, young professionals with disposable income is a pretty choice demographic.
So why is it good shows that people like me watch always seem to be going off the air just when I start to enjoy them, while shows that seem to appeal to a, er, less desirable demographic seem to succeed? Something like 'Temptation Island' may get a large viewer base, but from what I've experienced (and I don't claim to be an expert), those types of people would be of little interest to advertisers, save places like Wal-mart or used car dealerships with a large inventory of pickup trucks.
I'm not trying to be elitist, I'm sure at one point I'll get married and the drudgery of work and family will stretch my mind so much I'll take solace in the soothing simplicity of bad TV, while stretching my wallet to the point where sales at Wal-Mart will become interesting. But for the time being, well, I'm not.
So I've been trying to figure out why Fox has handled Futurama the way they have, and this is what I've come up with.
1. The ratings system is really, really off base. Somehow, the companies who track ratings are giving incorrect numbers back to the networks, or the advertisers are reading them wrong. In college I was an account executive for a radio station (meaning I sold advertising). I found extensive frustration in the fact that our numbers were always very low while our ads always had such good direct feedback. I remember once a failed pitch I had with the owner of a bicycle shop, who would buy ads from a competitor (a country and western station) that cost 10 times as much as ours. Why? Because their ratings were higher. While I'm sure people who like country buy bicycles, after years of advertising the stores prime clientele appeared to remain the sort of people who preferred rock.
2. The networks are full of idiots. I don't mean their stupid because the shows are so bad; It's been decades since quality was a priority, only money matters now. (Rupert Murdoch even admitted years ago in an interview that the only show he really enjoys watching on his network was the 'Simpsons'). But even with money a priority, they still manage to muck it up. If you have a show with promise that's starting to catch on, you don't run it in a timeslot opposite a highly popular show on another network, then shrug your shoulders thinking 'oh I wonder why the ratings went down'. They make programming changes that succeed more in alienating viewers then to expose new shows. They seem to over promote the sort of stuff that just won't catch on, and ignore shows that might attract viewers.
3. The advertisers are idiots. Television is a for-profit business, and in all fairness, they will do whatever it takes to accommodate their revenue stream. On the other hand, it's the job of the people in marketing to get their message out to the largest number of potential customers for the least amount of money. So why then do I see ads for tampons during reruns of 'The A-Team'? Sure, woman watch 'The A-Team', but it seems to me they could have spent the cash for the A-team spot on another show that would reach a larger number of potential customers for the same amount of money. So many times I see an ad on TV and think 'I can't of anyone who would watch this show that would buy this product'.
For all the money advertisers spend on research and production, they so often forget about actually reaching their target demographic when it's time to buy ad space. A show like Futurama may only get 150,000 viewers (I'm making these numbers up for the sake of example), but if 75% of those viewers are likely to spend more then $1,000 a year on electronic equipment, you have a pretty solid demographic for the electronics based industry. .
4. People are idiots. We put up with poor programming. We pay extra for cable so we can receive more channels with more advertising. We holler and scream when our favorite shows are canceled and beg networks to let us make money for them. It could be that all my armchair analysis above is wrong. There is some deep logical reasoning for the seemingly asinine behavior of the networks and advertisers that maximizes profits. It could be this model will continue to be used so as long as we put up with it despite the fact that no viewer is ever really satisfied.
I'd like to think it's some sort of combination of the first three, but there is this sad, nagging voice that tells me it's all 4.
The Internet is generally stupid
"ahhhhh!!!, noooooo, ohh, ahhhh! %$(* ouch ahhh noooooo... oh im OK." - Amy.
Futurama S03E04 Parasites lost
Oh and im writing my congressman now.
See the #futurama IRC channel on Dalnet.
~shiny
WILL HACK FOR $$$
Come on, Daria was the best. It actually used irony, something most Americans don't seem to know exists.
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
Groeing will come up with something else, you can be sure. In other news, I just got a whole set of Futurama collectable tin toys--I might have to stash them somewhere if they weren't so cool.
Cool! Amazing Toys.
I haven't seen anything so funny in a long time. Not only is it funny, it is not afraid to be cruel. If you haven't seen it, it is an English send up of the old school British documentary.
Microsoft - Where would you like to go today, Maybe Jail?
Like Zoidberg says: Thats It! I'm going for a scuttle!
bite my shiny metal a$$
Hell, I only watch a few hours of TV (Simpsons, X, Futurama, ER {but not for much longer}), and I'm losing half of them! So, clearly, I am not part of the "target demographic", which, just as clearly, must be a bunch of slack-jawed yokels.
Reason #1 why the Simpsons went down the tube? Homer became a complete hateful idiot. Originally, before many of you were cognisant, Homer was a lovable oaf. Somehow, the writers decided that he should be an angry hateful oaf. The humour surrounding Homer has turned into one mean act after another.
It's amazing how a similarly minded group of individuals can disagree so completely on humour. I suspect we are witnessing here the dreaded 'Generation Gap'. Kids these day. Feh! I find it interesting that some people dislike shows like Malcolm in the Middle (which I find to be occasionally humourous) and then turn around and promote Futurama. Something for everyone, most of the time, appears to be the approach used by the suits at Fox.
BTW, if you want to see a funny show, and you have access to digital cable in Canada, check out The Royles. But only if you find potty mouth jokes to be funny.
:wq
I am SO happy that there is morpheus filesharing. Didn't watch more than one or two episodes on TV but still got all on my HDD ;).
...now where did I put my gun?
if fox cancels the series, the smallest station that broadcasts the next futurama-episodes, it is sufficient for me. somebody will MPEG them and share them on morpheus. that way it's even free of the damn commercials.
here in germany it is broadcasted by pro7, some network that just ran into big financial problems. I bet they'll now go on an audience whoring trip spitting out self produced garbage like the other german crapchannels.
and it will surely be too expensive to translate the futurama episodes anymore. boohoohooo no more german futurama series.
Why are there 2 "Save Futurama" petions in the top 10? Is this a genuine effort to save a much-loved TV show, or an exercise in "my petition's bigger than your petition"?
"E pur si muove!" - attributed to Galileo Galilei, 1564-1642
I know that the petition talks about this. But futurama really got a raw deal. Almost EVERY time i sat down to watch it, looking forward to it (with my son), it wasnt on. Instead there was football. No, not actually football, but just talking heads TALKING about football. I mean who watches these after-game talk-about-the-game-just-on shows anyway? I love football and baseball, but after the game is over, enough already! I ALREADY heard these commentators opinion for three hours. Instead they could have gone to the REGULARLY scheduled futurama show. Bad programmers. No twinkee. (Yeah, different kind of programmer... but still.)
-> Ron Legere I can never think of anything clever to put here.
Its their own fault as they didn't fit in with the Fox lineup. They should have added an airheaded lawyer, a couple slutty high school kids, maybe a few trash talking wrestlers.
The characters were great. The interaction was great. The animation was great. But for the love of God, don't you think you should be able to be funny in the year 3000 without winding the clock back? Geez, it's even worse than those Star Trek TOS and TNG time-travel-to-old-earth episodes.
I'll miss Futurama, especially Bender, but I'm sure that Matt's twisted mind can come up with something equally good, if not even better, sometime soon. Farewell Zoiberg, I hardly GLLLBBLBBLLBLBL!!! ye.
Mr. Ska
The first season of Futurama was terrific. I watched every episode and laughed my butt off. But since then it has been going downhill fast. It's seldom funny, and the level of cynicism has risen to the point that even I, a confirmed cynic, find my stomach knotting.
On the other hand, I still sometimes watch the Simpsons and almost always find it funny and provocative. I wonder what happened to Groening to make his later work so dark?
No sig? Sigh...
I only just got that tune out of my head after watching that episode last week...
Never mind Spamassassin. When's Spammerassassin coming out?
Oh no, they're taking your favorite cartoon off the air?! You'd best organize a march on Fox--this must be stopped! How can these TV exec's be so ignorant? How can they be so insensitive? Holy shit, what's the world coming to?!!!
PegQuin--I've got a sneakin' suspicion
Could someone with a Gimp talent make a banner and a button to put on web sites? I think that would be a nice idea, now if we could just figure out a link we could point it to. :)
(gotta like Netflix) and it's pretty good, but not worth buying for me. What I'd like to see is a Simpsons DVD compendium of the Halloween Episodes. I'd pay almost as much for that as I would the Sopranos at the by-season-rate.
Glad to hear that even if Futurama is cancelled (noooooo) they are going to do the DVD route. Futurama is a great example of computers being used to further illustrate and extend cartoons without overshadowing the plot or storyline simply because it is possible.
Face it, people are stupid, and the internet is the place where they all meet.
Click Here
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
What a stupid, pathetic show.
Only its avid watchers are more pathetic.
To its fans: "Get a life."
Is that dreck still on the air? I honestly tried to give it a chance, and watched it 3 or 4 times when it first started -- it simply sucked. It wasn't funny, it just didn't have a point.
In my opinion.
Absurdity: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion. -- Ambrose Bierce
Despite virtually no promotion and frequent preemptions, ``Futurama''has still managed to win its 7 p.m. Sunday slot this season in teens, adults 18-34 and adults 18-49. Executives at producer 20th Century Fox TV have already had early talks about launching the show in syndication, though no deals are close.
Can you imagine what would happen if they actually supported the show?
Then again, I wouldn't put too much hope in other networks. 'Inside Schwatrz' was cancelled with its 30 share because it lost half of the lead 60 share from 'Friends'.
Mod Karma -1: I sed bad wurds. If I cep my mouf shut, I wud be at riyses.
Excellent suggestion. My faith is restored that if we all just slack off at work and put our minds to it, we can solve all the worlds problems; hunger, thermonuclear war, cancellation of quality shows, you name it.
jaz
Death to Argument by Slogan!! (This post twice-encrypted with ROT-13. Replies not using same will be ignored)
Yeah.. Poor Futurama never got the chance.. it had a bad spot.. blah-blah-blah.. Futurama was/is not so good in the first place. I know I am going to get modded down for that, but here goes the rant:
.2
Yes Futurama is funny, especially the first episodes, but after awhile it lost its edge - last week they showed 5 episodes back to back instead of Saturday Night Live and I've tryed watching them (most of them were new for me - I stopped watching them half a year ago). Anyways, I could not sit through them, they got absolutely boring, all jokes are weak and similar: Bender is saying 'ass' and drinks and smokes and steals, Fry is dumb pizza boy, and so on. They only ones that are funny are: Zoidberg, professor, and Leela is just hot.
Family Guy has a bad spot, but it is the funniest show there is at this moment - they are well into their fourth season and they have not lost their edge. You can feel how much thought and preparation goes into every episode.
Anyways, just my
http://dtum.livejournal.com
I hate Futurama. I guess I'm the only one. But I can't believe people have a letter writing campaign for this, but nobody did anything about The Lone Gunmen. That was the funniest show I've seen in a long time. Sure the pilot wasn't that good (did anyone besides me notice how eerily similar the plot of the pilot was to the September 11 attacks? or am I the only one who actually watched it?), but it got better.
Sigh.
Secession is the right of all sentient beings.
Guess what? Fox has no idea whether I watch Futurama or not. They only know aggregate data collected from Nielsen participants.
... well, they need to watch less TV.
The point is -- they already know how many people watch it. Maybe they just need to know how many rabid fans there are...
But anyway, I actually do hope these petitions for TV shows go away. I like TV sometimes, but anybody who's in love with a show so much to make a petition about it
There's a good reason why networks cancel shows man, CAUSE THEY SUCK!!!! That's the dumbest cartoon (well maybe not) I've ever seen!
I can't believe anybody cares about _any_ program on network tv. All programming sucks harder than Tracy Lords. I have yet to see a single episode of anything on the majors that was anything other than mind numbing crapola. Enjoy!
Where is the petition to keep Futurama off the air?
How do the FOX execs know that anyone is watching. I have never been asked what I watch. has anyone in here ever been a Neilsen family:-)
Perhaps FOX should switch the timeslots of Futurama and Malcolm in the Middle for, say, a month.
Futurama came on after the Simpsons for at least the first full season. And guess what? No one watched it.
Just face it: more people like Malcolm in the Middle, for God knows what reason. And more people like That 70's Show, and more people like Boston Public, and more people like Ally McBeal, and more people like to watch football. Futurama is a niche show, and regardless of how good it is, Fox doesn't have to show it if no one is going to watch it.
Futurama wasn't killed by its bad time slot; it died well before that. We were lucky that they kept showing it as long they did...
-Mike
I think Fox put Futurama in that slot specifically to kill it. They wanted another Simpsons, and Matt wouldn't kneel for them (IMO).
Futurama's way too adult to be on so early - I don't even let my 10-year-old watch it.
!!! Maybe Cartoon Network will pick it up and add it to the "Adult Swim" lineup. I feel a petition coming on...
U.S. Democracy: born 7/4/1776, died 12/12/2000 R.I.P.
I think it's true that is didn't have enough advertising. I loved the show but it hopped around so much I never knew when it was gonna be on.
Anyway, it's TOO LATE. My good friend know some of the animators on that show and they are all already laid off. Futurama: R.I.P.
FUNK!
Fox doesn't like Futurama for ONE REASON ALONE - They don't own it. Groening(sp?) does. They only buy it. For futurama to defect to Cartoon Network would be a real coup, but not impossible.
As long as I can always watch the original Rocky and Bullwinkle animated series, I'm in heaven. For those of you who haven't revisited R & B since you were too young to catch its humor, do. Nothing else even comes close.
Admittedly this is a shameless plug but considering the large amount of Futurama fans I regularly meet on IRC that still don't know of my page I thought I'd take a chance at this place to advertise it since the audience here seems to fit very well:
;)
On my page you'll get a full listing of all Futurama/Family Guy airdates, episode codes, nfos and episode synopsis.
Currently I'm thinking about moving the synopsises (sp?) to seperate files so that the page loads as fast as it used to. Comments & flames welcome. Be reasonable though
You don't suppose FOX compares the Futurama rating on the same chart with shows that were shown in all time zones and not pre-empted by football? That's so stupid it might be true...
test
Because its on once a week (for all that i know) if i miss it i dont get a chance to see it again till next week which sucks. Dont cancel it put it on MORE!
Remember that FOX is the same network that aired:
WHO WANTS TO MARRY A MILLIONARE
TEMPTATION ISLAND
WHEN THE (fill in the blank) ATTACK
GREED
THE CHAMBER
etc.......
If only Al Gore won the 2000 election, maybe they FOX wouldn't dare to cancel FUTURAMA........
It's the ties that bind.
"MR. GW Bush, please issue a presidential mandate to keep FOX from cancelling FUTURAMA!"
i dont know about other locations, but here on Long Island (EST) football usually ran over futurama's time slot. i rememebr several occasions when i was screaming "2 MINUTES IN FOOTBALL LASTS HALF A F*CKING HOUR"
What about targeting it towards PBS stations? They have had some really funny stuff like Red Dwarf.
Maybe the petition will encourage the dictionary and spellcheck manufacturers to advertise on Futurama.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Will someone just do what the viewers (horny males) really want and put this show out as adult videos? Don't tell me you don't picture her full lips doing very dirty things.
I find it a bit sad that people will freak out and become activists over a TV show but don't bat an eyelash when the US rejects the International Land Mine Treaty or decides to boost defense spending to Cold War levels (enjoy paying for that next Apr 15). I wish people could at least give equal time to far more important things.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Is Al-Queda molesting your children at YOUR DAYCARE!? A special fear mongering broadcast tonight on FOX "news".
It seems that fox has a back log of 30 futurama episodes, that is why it chose night to sign to make more for next year.
Also, Matt owns the series, not FOX, so if fox cancel, there is always hope that it will get pick up else where.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Similar music, animation, style etc.. is only due to the fact that they're both Matt Groening creations! If you've read his other stuff, like Life from Hell, you see what I mean. Also, studio execs like ot save money, why wouldn't they recycle some of the simpsons resources.
When my friends and I first saw futurama, we all thought the same thing: Simpsons 3000 without a Homer. But the more I watch it, the more I realise it has a character and unique charm of its own.