Yearly Archives: 2016

‘Simpsons’ stumbles to new fall low against ‘American Music Awards’, beaten by ‘Family Guy’

Episodes
“It’s alright, Bart. Who cares if more people are interested in music? I’m from football and more people watch that!”

Sunday night (November 20) wasn’t exactly a great one for The Simpsons, which fell below the 3m barrier for the first time this season, and for the first time ever in fall. Another compounding fact is it being beaten by Family Guy in the 18-49s, which doesn’t happen usually nowadays.

Sunday’s episode, which was third on the night in scripted shows, dropped by 0.1 (in unroundeds) versus the last episode to air without football as a lead-in, to 1.326; it also dropped in audience share to 4%. The episode was seen by 2.876 million viewers (adjusted down marginally, from 2.889m in the preliminaries), the lowest so far this season. Both ratings are the lowest ever for any original episode airing in fall.

Sunday’s episode reportedly had a 58% 18-49 skew.

The equivalent episode last year was boosted by football so no fair comparison can be made.

The current season average is 1.99/6.5 with 4.56m; excluding episodes with a football lead-in, it is 1.43/4.8 with 3.84m.

By Sunday’s equivalent episode last year, the season average was 2.0/6 with 4.6m; excluding football-boosted episodes it is 1.55/4.75 with 3.44m.

Judging by this, ‘Simpsons’ is on par with last season so far, with less younger viewers but more viewers overall for non-football-boosted episodes this season.

Family Guy had fewer viewers this week, at 2.735m, but beat The Simpsons, at 1.358, but had the same audience share of 4% and was also second in scripted shows among 18-49s to NCIS: Los Angeles (1.5/4) on a football-inflated CBS. FOX’s schedule elsewhere was buoyed by two Bob’s Burgers instead of one and the less retentive Son of Zorn, with a 1.063/3 and 2.345m and 1.150/4 and 2.462m respectively.

Opposite, the American Music Awards on ABC was The Simpsons‘ bane, however, it dropped by a substantial 1.1 year-on-year, to an average of 2.4/7 and 8.182m. Additionally, mainstay Sunday Night Football on NBC continued riding high (in respect to the other shows on US TV at the moment) with 6.2/19 and 18.729m. Elsewhere, 14.891m were tuned into football-boosted CBS for 60 Minutes which scored a 2.6/8. Overall, The Simpsons was opposite a sizeable 30 million over the other broadcast networks, a few million up on usual. It seems The Simpsons was the show that got squeezed out.

In catch-up news, last week’s Cuba-centred episode tacked on 0.2 (6% of its original 3.1) to a 3.3 rating after 3 days of catch-up, to become seventh overall in programmes of the week ending November 13 after three days of catch-up viewing, and was second on FOX, to Empire on FOX (which gained 1.2 in catch-up to 4.1).

I’ll be back the Tuesday after next to see if Homer’s litigation battle with Mr. Burns can park more bums on seats.

Sources: TVByTheNumbers, SpottedRatings, ShowBuzzDaily

UPDATED 29th December 2016 to include previously excluded unrounded final numbers.

Season 28 News: Behind the scenes on Wayne Gretzky in “The Nightmare After Krustmas”

Episodes, Guest stars

We previously reported about Wayne Gretzky appearing in “The Last Traction Hero” as a guest star, but it has been confirmed he’ll appear in the christmas episode “The Nightmare After Krustmas“, the 10th episode of season 28, scheduled to air December 11, 2016.

Al Jean, in an interview with the NHL site, says: “We reached out to him. We were looking for heroes of the winter like Santa Claus and Jack Frost, and there couldn’t be a bigger hockey hero than Wayne Gretzky.”

“People argue about a lot of things, but they never argue about who’s the greatest hockey player. It’s always him. I don’t think there is anybody better at anything that Gretzky is as a hockey player. He had a lot of great stories and it was a real pleasure to meet him.” Gretzky recorded his part in the summer.

Jean lived in Michigan and is a Detroit Red Wings fan. “We just did a list (of athletes on the show). [Gretzky is] one of my favorites. I would say the only one that rivals him in terms of success in their sport is the Williams sisters (Serena and Venus) in tennis, and Magic Johnson in the NBA.”

This is the first time a hockey player will guest star in the show. “We had to get permission, and his wife, Colleen, thought it was a great idea to use him in the show. Growing up a big Red Wings fan, there’s nobody bigger than Gordie.

Jean concludes: “My dad has had season tickets at Joe Louis Arena for pretty much the whole run of Joe Louis Arena. He got the tickets back when they weren’t a good team, and we saw the whole rise and Stanley Cups. When the Red Wings won the Stanley Cup for the first time in my life in 1997, that was one of one of the highlights of my life, to go with my dad to that game. We have a lot of Canadians on the staff and a lot of hockey fans. A lot of us grew up in the northern U.S. or Canada.”

Source: NHL.com

Season 28 News: The synopsis for “The Nightmare After Krustmas” has been revealed

Uncategorized

The Synopsis for the upcoming 10th episode of  Season 28, titled “The Nightmare After Krustmas” has been revealed. The episode is scheduled to air December 11, 2016.

Krusty tries to impress his daughter as they spend Christmas with the Simpsons. Meanwhile, Reverend Lovejoy seeks converts after church attendance plummets, and Maggie is haunted by a spooky Christmas toy.

Stay tuned for more!

Season 28 News: A Special Guest for “The Nightmare After Krustmas” has been revealed

Episodes, Guest stars

Wayne-Gretzky-North-Pole_v5_CLN-1040x572A Special Guest for the upcoming episode, “The Nightmare After Krustmas“, has been revealed. The episode is scheduled to air December 11, 2016.

Wayne Gretzky will guest star as himself in the 1th episode of season 28.

In the interview with Sportsnet, Al Jean said: “He’s smart, funny and we felt like (Gretzky) must have when he met Gordie Howe as a kid.”

Joel Cohen also added: “I’m a Calgary native and consequent Oiler-hater, so 99 and I had a lot to talk about, and even more to trash-talk about — Semenko, Fuhr, Steve Smith bouncing the puck off Fuhr. Through it all, he was as classy and generous as you hope an icon can be. It was almost enough for me to forgive him for repeatedly demolishing my Flames’ playoff hopes. Not quite, but almost.”

Stay tuned for more!

Source: Sportsnet

Want to learn about how to have no kids and three money?

Miscellaneous
I’m not sure Glasgow University’s wanting this to happen…

Quite surprising news, that’s one way to put it, coming out of Glasgow University today (November 16). The news is that they will be offering courses on Homer Simpson philosophy next year – and sure enough, the British papers went wild.

Well, universities seemingly offer a course in everything these days.

The “D’Oh! The Simpsons Introduce Philosophy” short course runs four times next January and February from 10am to 4pm each day with tutor Dr. John Donaldson, costing £30 per person. It has been reported that all courses have been fully booked (the fact this happened so quickly showing how popular the show and the franchise still is), so don’t expect to be learning about the American way any time soon.

Donaldson said of the course: “This course is an introduction to philosophy; it’s a pick and mix of philosophy” and “uses the Simpsons as a vehicle to introduce new areas.” He said “there’s a lot of philosophy in the Simpsons,” comparing it to “a work of art” because of the depth and scope it has, it touchea a lot of philosophical areas. Donaldson also referred to how the course itself had gone viral. ‘Homer Simpson’ was a low trending topic on Twitter in the UK on the evening of the announcement.

Donaldson referred to “Matt Groening’s monument to the absurdities of human existence” enabling the ability to “explore some of philosophy’s most inspiring ideas”, and professed hopes the subject matter would help to attract people into studying philosophy, and also cited Groening having been a philosophy student himself, stating that his studying of it “comes through in each episode”.

The course will concern Homer’s deeds and pose the question if Aristotle would have regarded him as a virtuous figure, as well as morality and free will by examining early season 1 episode “Bart the Genius“, the plot of which involves Bart being referred to a school for the gifted after swapping test papers with fellow student Martin.

The University of Glasgow already offers philosophy courses derived from Doctor Who (time travel and the nature of reality), The Sopranos (about self-interest, moralty and the ethics of loyalty) and The Wire (in relation to drugs, Diogenes and the death of the American dream). Oh, and they also offer a Game of Thrones course revolving around politics, power and war.

TV fans, I think Glasgow Uni’s for you…

But I’m not sure Homer is exactly an encouraging force for students:

Trying is the first step toward failure.
– Realty Bites

Or should that be REALITY bites…? In any case, it resulted in Homer’s dinner all over the tablecloth.

And I assume they’ll also be studying the ability for the show to predict… a lot of things.

But of course, it is 2016; what else would you expect?:

Homer Simpson is trending and I was worried he’d died. It’s 2016 after all.
– Dr Pops on Twitter.

For further information on the course, you can visit the university’s website.

(Sources: University of Glasgow website and Twitter timeline, Frinkiac, The Scotsman, United Press International)