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."

Comments

Penalty: Intentional Grounding.

[LostCluster]

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.

Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding.

[forkazoo]

Has there ever been a show getting canceled that slashdot doesn't blame on the time slots and/or episode ordering? Seriously people, if the audience had been big enough and the ratings high enough, they would have moved them to prime time slots. The last pick of the shows also get last pick of the time slots, either deal with it or stay off the air then.

Sure, there are plenty of shows that deserved to die. You don't generally hear much about them because they deserved to die. Nobody invests time and effort begging to have them back, and for the most part they are so forgettable that you never hear about them again.

The reason that most canceled shows that you do hear about are spoken of as being canceled unfairly is simply a selection bias. To throw out one that I do remember - SeaQuest. I think it was a good premise, but by the third season it had gone so far from what they had originally intended that they lost off of their fans, but never managed to attract their new target audience. No amount of scheduling games would have made up for the sheer badness of some of the episodes. Scheduling games didn't help the continuity when a character was mourned, got killed off and then was alive and well, never to be seen again. Still, the show wasn't all that dependent on the continuity, so the executives who rearranged the episodes didn't have a huge negative effect.

OTOH, for Firefly they refused to show the damned pilot at any point in the original broadcast run. If "Lost" had been treated as badly as Firefly, it never would have made any money either.

Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding.

[DragonWriter]

Has there ever been a show getting canceled that slashdot doesn't blame on the time slots and/or episode ordering?

Yes. First, "Slashdot" isn't an entity which expresses opinions of the type you describe, different groups of individual slashdot posters express such opinions, and the opinions you describe have been expressed on slashdot regarding a handful of programs that have been cancelled over a period of very many years, out of the dozens of series that are cancelled each year.

Seriously people, if the audience had been big enough and the ratings high enough, they would have moved them to prime time slots.

Showing episodes out-of-order, when they are written with a broad story arc, clearly interferes with developing an audience(the Firefly issue), as does not showing a show consistently at all (the Futurama issue, which wasn't about timeslot so much as about following NFL football and thus frequently being either cancelled entirely or joined "in progress".)

The Futurama scheduling decision is clearly the kind of thing a network does because it doesn't think a show has that much value to start with -- it is treating the show as disposable filler and isn't even pretending to try to market it effectively. It's perfectly reasonable to believe that that kind of behavior interfered with the show reaching an audience that it otherwise would have. In fact, the DVD sales which evidenced that there was such an audience that the original broadcast schedule had failed to reach is the reason the show was renewed after the first time it was cancelled, and the fact that it has remained on the air since (whether in danger of being cancelled each season or not) pretty clearly indicates that even Fox thinks that the show is viable, despite it not having appeared to be under the initial treatment Fox gave it.

Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding.

[Surt]

I'm pretty sure that arrested development was killed by a yacht explosion.

Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding.

[LostCluster]

Arrested Development had too many big-name stars, and therefore a bloated budget. It was popular, but not popular enough to justify its production costs. Remember, the object of the TV game is to make money, not keep fans happy.

Family Guy was also on the Sunday post-NFL schedule and not given right-of-way over The Simpsons, and therefore also killed by the same factors that did in Futurama.
 

Re:Penalty: Intentional Grounding.

[gad_zuki!]

>You don't generally hear much about them because they deserved to die.

How often do you hear, "Would you like to sign my petition to bring back Tru Calling and Fish Police?"

Re:So what?

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time the Simpsons was funny was in.. oh 1999?

Since the opener "Good news everyone!!" was taken

[Tanks*Guns]

Fry, it's been years since medical school, so remind me. Disemboweling in your species, fatal or non-fatal?

Re:So what?

[Kjella]

The Simpsons has a broad appeal to the typical soccer mom family. Futurama is a nerdy show which was a Leela/Fry romance about as awkward as The Big Bang Theory with a lobster from outer space. Futurama has to hit home runs with their target demographic because it's small, the Simpsons haven't done that in years. They keep being sufficiently successful because they don't age, every year there's a new year's worth of children identifying themselves with Bart and Lisa. Live actors won't be the same, for example right now we have the Harry Potter generation, people that grew up alongside the actors but the next generation will find someting else. They might still watch the Simpsons though.

Re:So what?

[Joe Tie.]

a Leela/Fry romance about as awkward as The Big Bang Theory

I'd say the exact opposite there. The big bang theory has romances that are awkward because they don't fit. There's no reason for the people dating in that show to be dating. There's no chemistry, and the writers just never seem to know what to do with them together. Fry/Leela are great because the characters are well written. Each has issues of abandonment and isolation within the greater society at large which act as a common bond.

Everyone now senteced to...

[rshol]

Death,

By snu snu!!

Carry on.

Re:Good News Everyone!

[Jenming]

The only way they can tell if you watch it is if you are selected for a Nelson survey. If you are part of one be sure to put down you watched Futurama in every time slot available.

I guess there is some damage you do to overall commercial value by pirating, but you would do the same damage by watching TV and not changing your purchasing habits.

Re:So what?

[Jenming]

I was going to mod you down, but instead I wasted your time by making you read this and the original poor post.

Re:Good News Everyone!

[Nugoo]

Last I checked, Canada has Internet connections, so, yes, it is.

Re:So what?

[sorak]

Right, she's a one-eyed mutant with an ancient alien for a pet, and he's his own time traveling grandson. You'd think they'd have more to talk about.

Re:Good News Everyone!

[StikyPad]

A Nelson survey?

HA-HA!

Re:So what?

[hedwards]

That's no fair you changed the number by counting them.

Re:So what?

[StikyPad]

Futurama definitely takes a much keener intellect to really appreciate.

I know what you mean. Like when Bender's drinking a beer, at first I'm like "WTF, robots drink beer?!? That does not make sense!" But then after subsequent viewings, I come to the realization that his internal power source must be some sort of combustion engine, so really he's just refueling, but sometimes the waste water from his internal distillation process leaks onto his circuitry, which makes him behave erratically. Only then do I really appreciate the joke.

Re:That show is total soul-fluff. Meaningless.

[delinear]

No soul? Nothing to say about the people? Okay, it doesn't force the sentimentality down your throat like some shows (and that's a good thing IMO), but there are many moving moments - the four leaf clover episode gets me no matter how many times I watch it with subtle overtones of sibling rivalry overruled by brotherly love spread over a thousand years, and with comedic intervention throughout to stop it becoming too cloying. It's an incredibly clever piece of television because of the human insight.