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Futurama to be Resurrected?
KingDaveRa writes "Futurama could follow in the footsteps of Family Guy and re-enter production more than two years after it was axed. The animated series, brainchild of Simpsons creator Matt Groening, ended after four produced seasons amid lackluster ratings and broken scheduling on broadcast network Fox." From the Reuters article: "Reps for 20th Century Fox have declined to comment on the news, but Variety says initial negotiations have begun. If revived, it's unclear exactly which network would air the new episodes. While Fox housed the original series, the show found new life once reruns began showing on the Cartoon Network. Comedy Central subsequently snapped up the off-air rights and will exclusively air the repeats beginning in 2008. " A follow-up to Groening and Cohen's recent comments.
As cool as more Futurama episodes would be, I think the last episode was just perfect as a Last Episode. In fact, some of the almost-last episodes were so good that I just dont' think it could be anything but a step back.
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is kinky.
Fox could save themselves a lot of trouble by just not cancelling these shows in the first place. Low ratings for a critically-acclaimed show? How about better promotion and not jacking around with the schedule? The word-of-mouth behind these programs makes people want to watch them, but that doesn't do much good if new viewers can't find the proper time slot.
There are certainly benifits to bringing old shows back, mostly a known audience and fewer development costs, but in terms of entertainment I find that these shows add very little.
I enjoyed Family Guy, but face the facts. It was cancelled because it pushed too hard (When you wish upon a Weintstein), and clearly they show was nuetered before it was let back on the air.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Is will the original writing staff be re-hired, this is what really made the episodes in the first place, I remember reading somewhere about the high number of PH.ds and MBAs they had working on the writing staff, not that degress automatically mean anything, but I thought it was interesting given the type of jokes that I would often laugh at but my wife would have no clue what was funny about them...
Here's a hint to programming managers.... Scheduling a sports event is a lot simpler than you think.
Step 1: block an extra hour for the sports event.
Step 2: book sports guests to fill that hour.
Step 3: when (not if) the game runs over, trim the time per person.
Step 4: if it runs -really- long, cut entire interviews.
Step 5: since you've probably paid to have interviews with those folks, tape the interviews off-air at the end.
Step 6: schedule a regular sports follow-up show later in the week and use the interviews taped after the game.
My suspicion is that the people doing the scheduling are just clueless. As I said in a brief speech to a room full of network execs, TV personalities, and communications faculty a few years ago, when you pay people peanuts like most TV stations do, the best and brightest tend to seek careers elsewhere.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
If Fox had just given that (and Family Guy) a real timeslot where you could see it every week, maybe they'd have made more money off it.
Absolutely. Fox bungled Futurama like no other show before. Even my Tivo couldn't keep up with the continously changing schedule. The reason it got low ratings is that absolutely nobody knew when it was on.
When it started getting aired on Adult Swim, I was finally able to see a whole season or two of shows that I have never seen before. Not for lack of trying, mind you, it was just impossible to know when they aired them.
Family Guy, however, I never did understand why they cancelled it. It had a decent timeslot, and it was getting increasing numbers of viewers. They just shot it down before it built up a large audience. These days it seems like they cancel a show if it's not an instant hit, which is stupid, of course. Firefly was totally mishandled by airing the episodes wrong (you can't do that when there are story arcs and characters to be developed). They shot down Wonderfalls, a terrific show, after only 4 episodes that *nobody knew about* because they failed to advertise the thing!
Fox just has the most amazing bunch of idiots running the network. It's simply incredible how dumb these decisions are.
- Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set him on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You've absolutely hit the nail on the head. I used to live (aswel as attend school) in a small town where... erm, the general population was as confused about anything beyond farming as Fry was when he witnessed his first game of Blurnsball. A friend of mine and I used to spend our spares in the "cafeteria" watching Futurama and just talking about whatever. Sometimes a few people would join us in watching Futurama and at every nerdy joke, or technical joke, or anything above and beyond the mainstream there failed to be anything out of them. Not even a snicker. Of course they got the slap stick side of it. If Fry got hit, burned by eating Bender's sterno-nicoise, or if Kif was forced to look up Brannigans, uhh skirt? Or if Kif falls off the roof after an Amazonian pokes at him.. They laugh. There were even people who called us losers for watching Futurama, because it wasn't funny. Regular people couldn't see the true hilarity of it. Part of me wishes new episodes would go straight to DVD instead of being aired on tv. No one can screw around with their timeslots then, those that truly appreciate the series will be able to watch them over and over again with no worry about a football game taking valuable Futurama-Time. I dunno, I'm kinda off on a tangent here. Fact is you've got it completely right, the humour is just too intelligent for the mainstream. Kind of saddening, isn't it.