American Dad

WAGON TRAIN

A picture of Moe from The Simpsons carrying a picket sign that says Bring Back Wagon Train.

Well, folks, after decades on the air, it looks like they finally stopped making The Simpsons…

…at least in part and only for the time being, as the writers have traded scripting pithy lines for carrying picket signs. The Writers Guild of America declared a strike after arriving at an impasse with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers. Here are some highlights:

  • Over at Jacobin, labor writer Alex Press has a good overview of the strike and the issues surrounding it.
  • In the lead-up to the strike, former American Dad! writer Kirk Rudell tweeted about how 20th Television screwed them out of money when the show moved to TBS:

  • The Animation Guild – which covers Simpsons animators – put up a Q&A on their website regarding the strike.
  • Simpsons writer Rob LaZebnik wrote a Twitter thread outlining what had been achieved in previous strikes:

  • Former showrunner Josh Weinstein tweeted about how “mini-rooms” deprive newer writers from the opportunities he had.
  • Deadline interviewed showrunner Al Jean on the picket line.
  • Could a prolonged strike actually benefit streaming services? Financial Times:

    Rich Greenfield, an analyst at LightShed, said a prolonged strike could even boost profits for the major streamers because they would not incur expenses for programming that had not been made — similar to the impact when the pandemic halted production.

    This could be especially helpful for entertainment groups carrying heavy debt loads, such as Warner Bros Discovery and Paramount.

    A prolonged strike “could lead to notably better than expected streaming profitability”, Greenfield said. “Multibillion-dollar operating losses could come in significantly better than expected.”

  • Disney subsidiary ABC Signature, which produces live-action shows, sent out a letter “reminding” showrunners they are required to work in their non-writing capacities, even though the WGA prohibits this.

That’s all for now. Solidarity forever!

TOON BEAT

Bordertown

With The Cleveland Show cancelled and American Dad heading for TBS, it was looking like Fox might be down to just three Seth MacFarlane-produced shows on their schedule: Family Guy, Dads, and the upcoming Cosmos reboot. Luckily, Fox immediately sprang into action and greenlit his latest cartoon (his fourth for the network), thus maintaining their quota:

Fox has given a 13-episode order to Bordertown, from MacFarlane and Family Guy‘s Mark Hentemann. Set in a fictitious desert town near the U.S.-Mexico border, Bordertown centers on the intertwining daily lives of neighbors Bud Buckwald and Ernesto Gonzales. Bud, a married father of three, is a Border Patrol agent who feels threatened by the cultural changes that have transformed his neighborhood. Living next door is Ernesto, an industrious Mexican immigrant and father of four, who is proud to be making it in America. As Bud and Ernesto’s paths begin to cross, their families become bound by friendship, romance and conflict.

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D'OH REPORT

dohBack in 2002, a more innocent time when we were told Saddam Hussein could attack us again at any moment, Futurama was on death watch. Since its premiere, Fox had shuffled its timeslot multiple times, and it eventually wound up in the 7 o’clock hour, the almost-but-not-quite-primetime hour where TV shows go to die (bad news for American Dad) and football pre-emptions occur every other week. Together with a lack of advertising and the fact that it was a niche show to begin with, Futurama could only manage to wring out a pitiful 6.4 million viewers when the show was mercifully put out to pasture by Fox.

In 2010, The Simpsons, which has held the same timeslot for sixteen straight seasons and has always had the full support of the network, received 5.74 million viewers for its season finale, which featured guest appearances by four American Idol judges and host Ryan Seacrest. [No Homers Club/Media Life Magazine]

TOON BEAT

Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane has declared that he will prolong the epic CARTOON WARS that are threatening the very fabric of our society with more shots at supposed rival show The Simpsons, after they semi-recently took a shot at Family Guy and American Dad. It’s like the Cold War nuclear arms race except with cartoons and nerds [ToonZone]