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.
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 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
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.
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?
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.
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?
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.
"You know, Fox turned into a Hard core sex channel so gradually, I didn't even notice."
- Marge
no comment
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?
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