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David X. Cohen Talks About Futurama's New Season
joelkeller writes "I spoke to David X. Cohen, executive producer of Futurama, about the upcoming season, which premieres on June 24 on Comedy Central. He talks about the season finale (!) and how the show is always on the precipice of cancellation."
The reason why Fox ruined the original airings of Futurama was because they slotted it at 7:30pm on Sundays... a time slot that got murdered by NFL runovers in the Eastern and Central time zones. Fans couldn't reliably tune in because they didn't know if the episode would air, if the episode would be joined in progress, or if the entire airing would be deleted by an overtime NFL game. Fox's policy of running Sunday primetime as soon as possible... either at 7pm sharp if there was no NFL game, or as soon as it concluded if there was one, made whether Futurama's slot would air and when dependent on which NFL game your city saw that afternoon.
What a mess... since getting the NFL, Fox never had a successful Sunday 7pm hour. A few years after repeated throwing good shows into a bad time slot, they finally got the clue. Fox Sports now produces a postgame show called The OT (a play-on-words based on The OC, which this show has outlasted) that is joined like the halftime show as each game concludes, and can show bonus coverage of games still going to stations that get stuck with an early finish, and always ends at 8pm ET sharp. Thanks for watching Fox NFL Sunday, The Simpsons is next.