Friday, August 26, 2011

Fox Prime Time Animation Watch

Fox has various prime-time cartoons in their hopper. Here is yet another:

... [Ryan] Reynolds and [Sandra] Bullock are expected to lead the voice cast of And Then There Was Gordon, an animated comedy from Reynolds and Allan Loeb’s recently launched TV company DarkFire, which has received a presentation order from Fox ...

The question isn't why Fox is doing another night-time animated half-hour. The puzzlement becomes, why are Rupert and his minions the only ones pursuing television animation during the evening hours in a serious way? Because they're the only ones who know how to do it successfully? Because they're the only ones with a WGAw contract to write same? (Both ideas far-fetched to me, but stranger things have happened in Televisionland.)

One thing I know. If Fox Broadcasting makes enough money from all its home-screen animation, the other carnivores -- Disney, Universal-NBC, CBS-Viacom -- will be elbowing their way into the market.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Because they're the only ones who know how to do it successfully?"

This.

Mike said...

It really boils down to the network executives getting past their desire to hit one out of the park in the first season. There have been a number of decent series (Oblongs, Mission Hill, God, the Devil and Bob) that never even saw a full first season aired. Fox on the other hand is still pushing American Dad, now in its seventh season, when it has never had good ratings.

Alex Dudley said...

Fox on the other hand is still pushing American Dad, now in its seventh season, when it has never had good ratings.

And we should be thankful, since that show is WAY better than Family Guy.

Sooner or later, some broadcast network other than FOX will get it right. They just need a good creative team, a good marketing team, and executives who don't know when to quit.

Anonymous said...

**Fox is still pushing American Dad, now in its seventh season, when it has never had good ratings.**

Dad is still on the schedule because Fox doesn't want to upset its Golden Boy. Even though Dad sucks donkey balls.

stevenem said...

It's very simple. Fox keeps building on the bedrock (unintentional Flintstones reference), blue chip success of the Simpsons. They know they will always have the opportunity to grab that audience and hold it. If another network is able to replicate that situation, (one solid hit), they will be able to do the same thing.

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