A Sneak Peek for the upcoming 6th episode of season 28, titled “There Will Be Buds“, has been released by Lax Sports Network. The episode airs November 6, 2016, after a week pause.
Homer pays Choremonkey Matt Leinart to play catch with Bart, the two of whom form a strong bond, much to Homer’s chagrin.
The current listing synopsis is as follows:
Homer finds a new app that makes his life much easier and outsources his father-son bonding. Meanwhile, Grampa finds that he is about to be a father again.
Special Guests
Former american football quarterbacks Dan Fouts and Matt Leinart will guest star as themselves
Former The Simpsons writer and producer Kevin Curran died today, October 25th, aged 59. He died today in his home in Los Angeles after a battle with a long illness. Al Jean reported his death via Twitter.
Curran served as a writer and producer between season 14 and 27, writing 11 episodes for the show. He won three Emmy awards during his time working on the show.
Sunday night (October 23) saw Harry Shearer’s first endeavour into writing for the show being seen by 3.362 million and garnering a 1.541/5 18-49 rating, FOX’s highest rated show of the night and broadcast TV’s top-rated scripted show in 18-49s outside of NCIS: Los Angeles on CBS with a 1.7/5 and 11.395 million, part of a football-boosted night for the network.
In terms of viewers, “Trust but Clarify” was up from the last non-NFL-boosted episode, which had 3.221 million, and was down infinitesimally from the 3.364 million the season premiere entertained. The equivalent episode last year was “Treehouse of Horror XXVI” which had 6.754 million viewers and scored a 2.8/8 rating off the back of a football lead-in.
So far this season, “The Simpsons” is averaging a 1.5/5 and 3.32 million viewers, excluding the episodes boosted by football, in which case it is 2.0/7 and 4.68 million viewers.
Outside of The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers enjoyed being FOX’s second-highest rated show of the night, and a, most probably, brief jump over the 3 million viewer barrier, with a 1.409/5 and 3.014 million viewers. Son of Zorn remained the right side of the 1.0 barrier, with a 1.014/3 rating and 2.271 million viewers. At 9pm, broadcast TV cowered in a corner as The Walking Dead returned to a monstrous 8.36 rating and 17.029 million viewers on cable channel AMC, but FOX held up quite well (unlike ABC which saw two shows drop to 0.7), with Family Guy amusing 2.487 million, reversing the trend of losing viewers from Zorn, with a 1.232/4 rating (both figures the lowest so far this season), and The Last Man on Earth tickling 2.14 million with a 0.873/3 rating.
Both The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers adjusted down from 1.6 ratings in the preliminaries which were inflated by local NFL overruns. Simpsons also adjusted down from 3.412 million viewers.
The top show of the night (on broadcast TV that is) was, of course, football, on NBC, which had a 6.0 average and 17.707 million from 8:31pm to midnight. Around 27 million viewers were watching the other three broadcast networks during The Simpsons‘ telecast.
The Simpsons is having a week off before it returns with Kirk’s desperation for a friend in “There Will Be Buds” on November 6th. See you November 8th, then!
Fox decided last season to ignore the live+same day ratings (those who watched a show on the day of original broadcast) and to focus on the ratings that came from viewers watching on catch-up (which explains why flop Scream Queens eked its way to a second season). The Simpsons has only appeared in the top 25 broadcast show lists for live+3 catchup when the episodes have been NFL boosted so far this season.
The first NFL-boosted episode of the season, “Friends and Family” had 2.6 on its original airing, and after three days of catch-up, gained 0.3 and 12% versus its Live + Same Day rating, to 2.9, ranking 13th of the top 25 broadcast shows in Live+3 18-49s of the week ending October 2nd. “Treehouse of Horror XVIII” was boosted also, gaining 0.4 and 13% versus its live+same day rating to 3.4, ranking 8th in the broadcast shows of the week; this episode seemed to have had the “Treehouse of Horror” aspect work its way into the higher viewership as well, and to a lesser extent the fact it was the 600th episode (although the 500th did see an increase due to its landmark status).
In both cases, they were the second most-watched shows of the week in 18-49 ratings for FOX, behind Empire, which had 5.1 and 4.6 respectively. Outside of football-inflated episodes, The Simpsons usually is a non-appearance in the list, and probably only gains a tenth or two in catch-up, since Family Guy usually sneaks into the list with a similar live+same day rating.
The next football-aided episode isn’t for another three weeks, so we probably won’t be seeing The Simpsons in the list again until the episode in which they take Grampa to Cuba – are they sure that’s a good idea?
The Air Date and Details for the upcoming 7th episode of season 28, titled “Havana Wild Weekend“, has been released by FOX.
Air Date
The episode airs November 13, 2016.
Plot
When the Retirement Castle and the V.A. Hospital can’t solve Grampa‘s health issues, the Simpsons decide to take a family trip to Cuba to get him cheap medical care.
Halloween isn’t for two weeks, yet The Simpsons decided to broadcast their annual Treehouse of Horror episode, which coincidentally was also the show’s 600th episode. And if that wasn’t enough to get people watching, 15 million viewers were tuned into FOX beforehand, half the number watching the spooky celebration.
“Treehouse of Horror XVIII” entertained 7.442 million viewers on Sunday night (October 16), up 1.4 million from “Friends and Family”, this season’s only other NFL-inflated episode so far, over double last week’snon-NFL-boosted episode, and was the highest audience for the show since January’s “Teenage Mutant Milk-Caused Hurdles” with 8.33 million viewers; the episode also had a 3.045/10 in the 18-49 demographic, 0.4/1 higher than “Friends and Family”, double the rating last week’s episode had (1.5/5) and was the show’s highest 18-49 rating also since “Hurdles”, which had a 3.6/10.
Sunday’s episode ranked six in the most-watched broadcast shows in adults 18-49 for October 10-16, 2016 with 3.907 million of its viewers in that demographic.
The episode adjusted down slightly from 3.1/10 and 7.514 million viewers in the preliminaries, but was still the top non-sport show of the night by 1.4/5, a difference both “Family Guy” (2nd most-watched non-sport show of the night; 1.634/5, 3.677) and “Son of Zorn” (3rd; 1.525/5, 3.775) edged over, despite both being down 0.1 from their last episodes.
The “Treehouse of Horror” ep was higher than the rating for last year’s, which had 2.8/8 and 6.75 million viewers, which also had the joy of having an NFL lead-in. Sunday’s ep was the highest “THOH” episode since season 26’s “Treehouse of Horror XXV“, which had 3.6/10 and 7.76 million viewers. The equivalent episode last season was, however, “Halloween of Horror“, which had 1.7/5 and 3.69 million, just over half and under, respectively, what Sunday’s ep received. The 600th episode also achieved a higher audience than the 500th, which had a 2.6 and 5.77 million watching.
After Sunday’s episode, the first four eps are up just under 15% year-on-year with a 2.13 average in 18-49 ratings, and up 23% in total viewers with a 5.006 million average.
The highest rated show on the night was, inevitably, football, with an overrun on Fox attracting 20.102 million and a 7.0 rating. As always, the FOX audience may have been deflated by NBC football, which averaged 4.9/16 and 13.6 million from “Zorn” onwards, with around nearly 9-11 million tuned into NBC during Simpsons.
This coming Sunday’s episode doesn’t have football for a lead-in, so the 601st episode should see figures back in the mid-1s and 3/4 million viewers.
Two Trailers for the upcoming 5th episode of season 28, titled “Trust But Clarify“, have been released by FOX. The episode airs October 23, 2016. The first trailer contains sketches from the other Fox Sunday shows too.
Stay tuned for more!
Trailers
-The videos have been made private and were removed-
A new sneak peek for the 4th episode of season 28, the 600th spooktacular “Treehouse of Horror XXVII“, has been released by FOX. The episode is airing RIGHT NOW!