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Ralph Snart
Agent Provocateur
Near Death Star Inhabitant
DOOP Secretary
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Gang, enjoy the ride. Yes, there will be some turkeys as the seasons roll along but when you least expect it, an episode will show up that it will light up the night's sky like Fry's Chevy Nova.
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Frisco17
DOOP Secretary
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Like "The Prisoner of Benda" I honestly expected that one to suck because mind switching has been done to death. God was I wrong.
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Aki
Professor
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I have a feeling the finale will gather a nice viewership. Finales always does, and this sounds like an amazing one.
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Svip
Administrator
DOOP Secretary
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With all this promotional stuff that CC is doing for Futurama (something which can't be said for Fox), you'd think it would be a bad investment not to renew the show. I certainly think so.
And thus, this is why I know they are going to renew it. I was right back in February 2009 about Futurama coming back on TV and I am right this time around.
Yeah, sure, tell me not to get cocky, because I might jinx it. But I don't believe in such mumbo jumbo.
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ensignfry74
Crustacean
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I have to agree with Svip on this one because 1, all that money on advertising would be for nothing. 2, isn't futurama the third highest rated show on cc for thursday nights or overall
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Ralph Snart
Agent Provocateur
Near Death Star Inhabitant
DOOP Secretary
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One thing for sure, CC is promoting the hell out of it. I saw promos for Futurama in the double digit numbers on CC just today.
Including how Leela reacts to a mutated Fry...
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Aki
Professor
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One thing for sure, CC is promoting the hell out of it. I saw promos for Futurama in the double digit numbers on CC just today.
Including how Leela reacts to a mutated Fry... Spoiler that. Now.
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Ralph Snart
Agent Provocateur
Near Death Star Inhabitant
DOOP Secretary
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Spoiler that. Now.
I see no reason to spoiler something that has been shown on CC at least a dozen times this weekend. It's not giving away anything more than what CC is letting people to see. Unlike others, i don't watch the eps on Torrents days prior to the broadcast. The fact is. I'm one of the last Americans to see the new eps because they come on @ 11PM my time. If a mod or admin feels that something like this needs to be spoilered, then I'll do it. Then people shouldn't watch CC at all prior to any new episodes release.
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i_c_weiner
DOOP Secretary
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It was only the first two episodes that were found on torrent sites before their broadcasts. That was due to copies being sent out to critics before the premiere to get a buzz started.
As far as I know, 20CFx pays for the production of Futurama and receives the profits from DVD sales etc. That being said, the DVD sales for the season are going to be huge, especially internationally. We all know this. CC would be pretty dumb to cancel a program when they're not footing the majority of the production costs yet reap the advertising money benefits. And, even if they're paying for say 50% of the production costs, that's pretty cheap for Futurama standards. Plus, if we say they're paying 50/50, that means 20CFx has even more incentive to continue to produce the show.
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Svip
Administrator
DOOP Secretary
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I am not so certain it is 50/50. But of course, I have none of the details. Technically, however, 20th Century Fox Television pays the entire production. That's the investment. However, to ensure that they have a customer before the investment, they cut a deal with Comedy Central for them to purchase the episodes they produce right away.
20th Century Fox Television remains the owner of the episodes, however, and can sell them to however they want. Of course, unless in violation of any contract they are currently engaged in.
I doubt that Comedy Central could pay 'full price' for the production. But despite that, I still think by the time the DVDs come out, this season is going to prove a profitable investment. And I am sure 20th Century Fox Television can already see that now.
The question, of course, is whether Comedy Central is also turning a profit of their investment.
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Aki
Professor
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Spoiler that. Now.
I see no reason to spoiler something that has been shown on CC at least a dozen times this weekend. It's not giving away anything more than what CC is letting people to see.
Unlike others, i don't watch the eps on Torrents days prior to the broadcast. The fact is. I'm one of the last Americans to see the new eps because they come on @ 11PM my time.
If a mod or admin feels that something like this needs to be spoilered, then I'll do it. Then people shouldn't watch CC at all prior to any new episodes release.
I don't mind such small spoilers, but I know others that feel even the slightest mention can destroy an episode. And the same people don't watch the previews and prefer the episode in its entirety. Plus, I've seen spoiler marked threads where people would go crazy for something like "it's a shippy episode". Oh, and the episodes haven't gotten out on torrent sites until much after the release, often about two or three hours after (though I had to wait about fifteen to see Lrrreconcilable Ndndifferences for some reason).
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speedracer
Bending Unit
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« Reply #143 on: 09-04-2010 20:32 »
« Last Edit on: 09-04-2010 20:48 »
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I am not so certain it is 50/50. But of course, I have none of the details. Technically, however, 20th Century Fox Television pays the entire production. That's the investment. However, to ensure that they have a customer before the investment, they cut a deal with Comedy Central for them to purchase the episodes they produce right away.
20th Century Fox Television remains the owner of the episodes, however, and can sell them to however they want. Of course, unless in violation of any contract they are currently engaged in.
I doubt that Comedy Central could pay 'full price' for the production. But despite that, I still think by the time the DVDs come out, this season is going to prove a profitable investment. And I am sure 20th Century Fox Television can already see that now.
The question, of course, is whether Comedy Central is also turning a profit of their investment.
CC is almost certainly making *some* profit, but they might very well try to negotiate a better deal for themselves before ordering a new set of episodes. Each episode of Futurama probably still costs around $1 million to create. That's the figure that was quoted last decade. Some of the employees' salaries have gone up since then, but other production costs probably have gone down since then due to improvements in technology, so let's keep the same figure. CC spends some of its own money to promote the show, as does 20th Century Fox. I have no idea how to estimate these costs. TV advertising rates are still around $20 per thousand viewers, or $20,000 per million viewers. I'm a bit surprised at this, given the crappy economy and DVR penetration in homes, but whatever. There are about 18 ads/episode and 2 million viewers, and $20,000 * 18 * 2 = $720,000. I'm going to skip TV advertising revenues from the rest of the world because I have no idea how to estimate those. Another batch of new episodes will also increase the syndication value of the series. Again, I have no idea how to estimate this. Bender's Big Score sold about 800,000 copies in the US; I'll estimate that Season 6 Volume 1 will sell about that many copies. Let's throw in international sales and round it up to one million. Each disc might bring in about $12 after the retailers take their cut. I'll fudge this up to $13 for convenience. So disc sales pull in $13 million, or $1 million per episode. If we consider CC and 20th Century Fox as one unit, they're paying $1 million to create each episode and pulling in $1.72 million (again, with the caveat that I'm ignoring a whole lot of other costs and revenue streams). So as a whole, the show is profitable. The "fair" thing to do would be for CC and Fox to split the revenues in rough proportion to the amount of money they're paying up front. But as we all know, you don't get "fair" value in business, you get what you negotiate. I don't know if CC paid a fixed fee up front for Season 6 and is keeping only the TV ad revenues, or if they had some other deal going. If a renewal is not signed by the time the Season 6 Part 1 disc is released, and disc sales are significantly different from either side's projections, there may be further negotiations before another deal is signed.
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Bigboysdontcry
Professor
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I hate business, it pisses me off. Its a lot like sex, someone is always getting screwed. It seems though with CC and fox, it looks like a mutual screwing. Mutual screwing typically leads to more product. Who is not up for some good mutual screwing. Sorry for the vulgarity. Enjoy.
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Aki
Professor
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In my analysis, the ratings have stayed relatively steady. The first episode always gets better ratings, and in this case 6ACV02 aired right after 6ACV01, meaning it too got great ratings (but somewhat less than 6ACV01 due to the number of people who didn't like 6ACV01 or for some other reasons couldn't stay by the TV that long).
Between 6ACV03 and 6ACV12, the ratings went down, but not radically. That's not unusual. 6ACV13 got incredibly poor ratings due to it airing irregularly.
I'm not concerned, but ofcourse I hope for the ratings to stay above two million per episode for this upcoming broadcast season.
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Gorky
DOOP Secretary
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*New Season BUMP!* An article on last night's ratings. Here's the relevant quote: While the NBA draft lured plenty of dudes away on ESPN, FX's most direct scripted competition in the 10 p.m. time slot Thursday was the return of Futurama to Comedy Central. The immortal animated comedy did fine for the network, though it was impacted by the new competition on FX: Back-to-back originals of Futurama averaged about 2.5 million viewers and a 1.1 in adults 18-49. That's down 20 percent from last season's super-hyped return to originals after a seven-year hiatus and about 40 percent below its demo score. Still, Futurama handily beat the FX comedies in Comedy Central's core audience of men under 35. And, in convenient chart form, there's this. Sounds decent to me, though I'm mostly dense about everything this sort of stuff.
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i_c_weiner
DOOP Secretary
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Also of note is that the Futurama audience was over 500k more viewers than the following staple The Daily Show, and almost a million viewers more than season premiering rival Louie.
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Aki
Professor
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Thanks for the update. Updated chart with this information: I think it's pretty good. Not amazing, but not poor either. I didn't know what to expect from these episodes viewership-wise, but it's possible (if not probable) that a lot of viewers last year were drawn to the fact that they were the first new episodes in a long time. It's not as exciting this time around. I don't know how much CC advertised this premiere in contrast to the season 6 premiere either, it could play in. I'm really surprised about the number of viewers who stayed by the TV between the episodes, also. It's pretty significant. Also, as Mongo pointed out, these episodes are number four and five of the entire season, which is pretty cool too. I for one hope that the curve of this season will be much higher than that of the last. The CGEF reviews (76 % and 81 %) are also very good, ahead of the curve of last broadcast season. Good start!
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