Homeric Homage

One of our entertainment trade papers celebrates the Yellow Family:

"The Simpsons came from the old world of television ... Fox was an upstart, it was just the big three networks and The Cosby Show was still dominant. And now, 23 years later, we’re living in this world of 650,000 channels and literally nine cake shows. And yet The Simpsons is still with us. It’s probably the only real bridge from the old world of media into the new world of media." ...

-- Conan O'Brien

Fox, strangely enough, is the only network that has built prime-time animated shows into franchises. Kudos to Fox.

Today I was up at Starz Media, home of The Simpsons animation staff, and an artist who's worked on three different Fox cartoon shows told me:

Working on Seth's shows are all right, but I think I like it here better. At Fox Animation, the writers are all on site, and more of the energy and attention goes to them. Here, we're in a different building from the writers and producers, and it's all artists and directors. And it feels different.

"Administration gives you more of their attention. They ask if you need something, if they can make the process better for you. That never happened to me at Fox. The artists were always several notches down in the pecking order." ...

There are staffers on The Simpsons who have been with the show from the beginning, and others who have been on board for seventeen, eighteen and nineteen years. To work on a single show for decades is unprecedented. And almost all of the long-term staffers know how lucky they are, and remark on it.