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.

Comments

Dana Gould has killed the Simpsons

[Civil_Disobedient]

Slightly off-topic, but since the subject has come to the Simpsons, I must say this.

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" ... "of events?"

Trying very hard to understand the logic:

[interstellar_donkey]

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. . .at least enough to keep the show running. But instead of looking at those demographics, a company will spend more money to buy a spot on a show that has a viewer base of 1 million (say, a temptation island), despite the fact that only 5% of those viewers are in their demographic. Do a little math, and you realize there are some misplaced resources.

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.