Futurama is a cult hit now, but the first time around, the second show from the creator
of The Simpsons was never given a real shot to shine.
Matt Groening became a true force in television animation after creating The Simpsons, which
has aired an astonishing 600-plus episodes on Fox since premiering 30 years ago in 1989.
In the late 90's, with The Simpsons having become a cultural phenomenon, Fox began to
express interest in a new show from Groening.
He came back to Fox with the show that would eventually become Futurama.
"Shut up and take my money!"
It should have been a surefire hit.
Instead, though, Groening says that Fox seemingly never really wanted Futurama to succeed, and
even sabotaged their own show rather than let Groening have another hit.
During an interview with Mother Jones, Groening had some not-so-great things to say about
working with Fox execs in Hollywood.
"You can't believe what babies people are.
It's really like being in junior high school."
Groening even said that Fox executives weren't fans of The Simpsons either, revealing,
"You can't expect people to behave in their own best interest.
It's in Fox's best interest for this show to be a success, but they'd rather mess with
the show and have them fail, than allow creators independence and let them succeed…They don't
like The Simpsons at Fox."
So how did this affect Futurama?
The network moved the show around from time slot to time slot, then let it die a quiet
death in 2003 before it was eventually revived by Comedy Central a few years later.
But the network seemed to be working against the show even before it debuted.
When Futurama was originally coming down the pike, Groening wanted Futurama to air at 8:30
PM on Sundays, directly after The Simpsons and ahead of The X-Files in order to give
the show the best chance to find a large audience.
This seemed like a no-brainer, but Fox disagreed, for whatever reason, choosing instead to show
only two episodes of Futurama in the Sunday night lineup before moving the series to a
much less desirable Tuesday night time slot.
By the time the second season of Futurama came around, Fox moved the show back to the
8:30 PM Sunday spot in which the first two episodes aired.
Then, in a move that alienated audiences further, Fox shifted the show again in the middle of
the season, this time bumping it up to 7:00 PM on Sunday.
And irregularly timed sporting events, which were a huge money-maker for Fox, made it even
harder to anticipate when Futurama would air each week.
This up-and-down scheduling had another disappointing consequence: Fox held onto episodes of Futurama
made for the third and fourth seasons and reserved them for a fifth season…that didn't
even end up airing on the network.
Fox never formally canceled Futurama, not in the way that television series are usually
axed nowadays.
The network simply stopped purchasing new episodes of Futurama, and the series went
out of production ahead of the fall 2003 broadcast season.
"At least I still have my self respect!"
A couple years later, though, Comedy Central picked up Futurama.
The series lasted another three seasons on the network before it ended in 2013, proving
Groening right and Fox wrong.
In a 2003 interview with The Calgary Sun, Groening offered his candid thoughts on the
situation:
"The people at Fox didn't ever support the show and it wasn't to their taste and, in
my opinion, they're out of their minds.
But they don't like The Simpsons either.
The idea of a TV show that they haven't gotten their greasy fingers all over creatively drives
them nuts.
That's why almost everything else is so lousy…We won the Emmy for best animated show and I
didn't even get a begrudging phone call from anyone at Fox.
That's a dark company that they can't even make a fake phone call."
Ouch.
Tell them how you really feel, Matt!
"Bite my colossal metal ass!"
Ultimately, though, Groening got the last laugh.
Futurama became a cult classic hit on a different network, The Simpsons continues to run to
this day, and his show at Netflix, Disenchantment, scored a second and third season in late 2018.
You know what they say: living well is the best revenge.
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