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Groening Confident on Futurama Relaunch
friedo writes "Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons and Futurama, says there may yet be hope for a renewed Futurama series, thanks to high DVD sales and syndication ratings. Comments from David X. Cohen: 'Three months ago, I would have said we were going to start tomorrow ... And one month ago I would also have said we were going to start tomorrow. So...my current estimate is that we're starting tomorrow.'"
"If we hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominos will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate."
"Lame" - Galaxar
The Family Guy came back because of the demand of the fans. Futurama can do it too! Too bad FOX wasn't smart enough to realize they should have never cancelled either of them. But what can you do? It's FOX.
Sure, we can get ALL the dead TV shows.
Starting tomorrow...
meh
of fertilizing your caviar. -Dr. Zoidberg
I always questioned the decision to cancel Futurama, it just seemed so...neutral. I wondered what made them do it. Lust for gold? Power? Perhaps they were all just born with a heart full of neutrality.
Either way, I'd be happy if they brought it back. I do wonder what the new episodes would be like though. The last episode kind of "wrapped" up the series.
First thing I want bender to say when he comes back....
"Fox can bite my shiny metal ass"
I couldn't fail to disagree with you any less.
Good News Everyone!
Why don't you get Groening for a Slashdot interview?? Then we'd have the inevitable "I'd like to subscribe to your newsletter" posts for a month.
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Yet another Fox series brought back from the dead by Adult Swim.
I disagree. In most markets the popularity of a product drives sales, which in turn determines if an item will continue to be available. Up until the publishing of series on DVD became popular, however, this mechanism was completely absent from the television market. Since no one could buy just the shows they wanted, decisions about whether or not to cancel a show were made based upon guesswork and Nielson ratings. In most cases this is still true. Now, TV executives are starting to get feedback via DVD sales indicating that they have been making really crappy decisions, including canceling some of the most popular shows. This is just the invisible hand of the market using greed to give people what they want. If we really want better quality shows, the answer is simple. Move to a model where shows are purchased individually and let the market decide. Personally, I'd much rather that greed drives TV executives to give people what they want, rather than greed driving them to make arbitrary guesses without any feedback.
As an aside, guess how many of the ten most popular TV series of all time were cancelled, or scheduled to be cancelled, and then saved at the last minute by some random event? TV executives tend to cancel anything different or novel, since it seems risky. DVD sales, like those of Futurama, are just a way for them to be told not to cancel something different, since it is in demand.
Peter: Everybody I've got bad news. We've been cancelled.
Lois:Oh no Peter! How could they do that?
Peter: Well unfortuantely Lois, there's just no more room on the schedule. We just gotta accept the fact that FOX has to make room for terrific shows like Dark Angel, Titus, Undeclared, Action, That 80's Show, Wonder Falls, Fast Lane, Andy Richter Controls The Universe, Skin, Girl's Club, Cracking Up, The Pitts, Firefly, Get Real, Freaky Links, Wanda At Large, Costello, The Lone Gunman, A Minute with Stan Hooper, Normal Ohio, Pasadena, Harsh Realm, Keen Eddy, The Street, American Embassy, Cedric The Entertainer, The Tick, Louie, And Greg The Bunny....
Lois:Is there no hope?
Peter:Well I suppose if ALL those shows go down the tubes we might have a shot.
Serenity is currently sitting at #1 on Amazon.com's DVD sales chart. The Firefly series DVD set is at #6. Not bad for a cancelled TV show that by all account "nobody" saw. Joss Whedon has said time and again that the DVD sales for Serenity will decide on the fate of the universe the movie and series are set in. I'm a pretty pessimistic Browncoat, but #1 on Amazon for a film that had almost no marketing seems pretty encouraging to me.
Futurama is the perfect show to prove to the content providers that TV is a useless medium for selling content. they need to make futurama available as a pay per episode download on itunes and in a higher resolution format. I would gladly subscribe to individual shows Monthly than pay Cable Tv to shovel 900 channels of garbage at me.
Futurama would be one of those shows that even at $3,99 a download would sell at insane levels and make mattand company vastly more money than they could ever get on a TV network and in the same setup become the pioneers that pavedthe way for the future of television.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Personal favorite: ... Number 3, in a quantum finish."
Speaker: "And the winner is
Farnsworth: "No fair! You changed the outcome by measuring it!"
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
You heard correctly.
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http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?ty
Though I don't have Showtime, I and a lot of people I know would gladly change that for this show.
"I Had..... SNOO SNOO"
Sorry to be pedantic, but technically you only had SNOO. There has to be 2 people for it to be SNOO SNOO.
"Derp de derp."