AlanBarber.Org
Tuesday, July 13, 2004
Return of The Family Guy
The New York Times has an article about The Family Guy returning. They make you register to read but it is free. In fact you can just fill in junk info (a fake name and email address) and click submit and then they’ll let you read the article.
Anyhoo… It gives some background on the show and the creator but that’s not that important. If you fan of the show you already know all of that! If you’re not I feel so sorry for you. It’s a great cartoon and you’re missing out. I have to be honest and say it’s actually better than the Simpsons. While there are plenty of lowbrow comedy moments that anyone will get the writers do have a tendency to use more jokes and gags that require a certain level of knowledge. They regularly make wise cracks about famous but not well known individuals. So younger audiences will still laugh but many probably don’t really know what the jokes about.
There are some quotes from a Fox executive about the show being revived and that’s really what I think is the important part of the article.
quote:
Network executives say scheduling played a role in the show’s initial failure. “It was moved around and put on Thursday night against `Friends,’ a difficult time period in which it never grew,” said Gail Berman, the Fox network’s president for entertainment. “But we loved the show’s irreverence. I thought it was wild. It’s very in-your-face humor. Very bold.”
I think this is probably the first time I’ve ever seen a TV exec almost admit that they might not have been right. I say that because Gail doesn’t outright say “We screwed up” but she make the point that they didn’t really give The Family Guy a good chance and in TV exec speak that does roughly translate to “We screwed up.”
So, it looks like The Family Guy will be back probably next summer. The article says early spring or summer 2005 so we can assume that it will be summer during the off season. You know they won’t put it with The Simpsons on Sunday where it belonged in the first place! If they did then they would be basically admitting they did screw up and you know no TV exec would allow that to happen. They’ll put it in some stupid mid-week timeslot that won’t give it good ratings.
Oh well enough of my ranting. I’m just glad to see the show come back. I guess I should go buy the DVDs sometime. There are two volumes out. There were only three season of the show so Volume one contains seasons one and two and Volume two has season three. They’re only like $40.00 each so it’s a great deal.
on 07/13/2004 at 10:39 AM