Why is futurama canceled

For its part, Comedy Central has been bulking up on original programming, most recently ordering a series from comedians Brody Stevens and Adam Devine as well as an adaptation of Broad City.

Longtime staple South Park , meanwhile, has seen its episode order reduced this season. Email: Lesley. Goldberg thr. When Fox finally pulled the plug in , everyone assumed the show was dead. Enter Comedy Central, which syndicated the show in with an option to to make new episodes.

It exercised that option a year later, announcing four direct-to-DVD movies it split into sixteen television episodes. That was followed by an order for another twenty-six episodes, and after that, yet another order for the same. Then, in a move that alienated audiences further, Fox shifted the show again in the middle of the season — this time bumping it up to PM on Sunday. You'd be forgiven for thinking Fox would've figured out this method of scheduling was doing nothing but hurting the show's prospects by the time the final season was airing on the network, but Futurama still had an unpredictable, erratic airing schedule up until its last episode on the network.

Irregularly timed sporting events, which were a huge money-maker for Fox, made it even harder to anticipate when Futurama would air each week. This up-and-down scheduling had a majorly disappointing consequence: Fox held on to episodes of Futurama made for the third and fourth seasons and reserved them for a fifth season Fox never formally canceled Futurama — not in the way that television series are usually axed nowadays.

The network simply stopped purchasing new episodes of Futurama , and the series went out of production ahead of the fall broadcast season.

Six years later, Comedy Central picked up Futurama. The series lasted seven years on the network before it ended in Fox allowed it to do so for two episodes, then moved it to a damning Tuesday night time slot where it wouldn't get as big an audience. To alienate viewers further, Fox moved Futurama again, this time back to Sundays, but at 7 PM instead.

This shifting around made it difficult for fans to anticipate when the show would air, and the sporting events airing on Fox at the time made it even harder. By , Fox had slowly let Futurama slip from its grasp. Fox had planned for a Season 5, holding on to episodes meant for Seasons 3 and 4 to create it; however, that season never came to fruition.

Futurama wasn't canceled in the traditional way -- rather, the network simply stopped purchasing episodes and it faded into obscurity.