Network TV Time Slots, and the Fate of The Simpsons

Those who recall the early years of The Simpsons' original run in the United States will remember that, save for a shift to Thursday nights for a few years, it aired Sundays, with the show from the fall of 1994 on a fixture of the television schedule at eight P.M.--in a period in which time slots still mattered greatly to whether a show was seen. They will also remember that that particular time slot was a highly problematic one from the get-go because that was the same TV season in which the network that aired it (FOX) also began airing football, one result of which was that the show was constantly preempted by Sunday football games. Indeed, in a given season one could not count on turning to their local FOX affiliate and actually seeing an episode of the show in that time slot until after the Super Bowl--February, basically, in spite of which the show's seasons came to the then-usual end in May.

The Simpsons was thus a show whose airing flew in the face of a network TV norm that had shows running like clockwork (22 episodes from September/October through May, etc.), and the strategy of making a show's viewing a habit (this the era of the once storied NBC Thursday night "Must See TV" and ABC Friday night "TGIF" line-ups). In the process this subjected a show that was not only hugely important for a new network endeavoring to establish itself on the scene as cultural icon and flagship, but also a past ratings winner, to grave disadvantage. That The Simpsons not only survived the constant mauling of its airing schedule through the first half of the TV season each and every year but thrived in spite of it is a testament to just how much the fans loved it, such that they stuck with it in spite of the network bosses' readiness to risk it, and them, for the sake of What-in-the-name-of-professional-football (which, when anything else gets in its way, always wins).

It also seems to some of those fans--and it is the fans who discuss it, primarily --that if the show endured the Suits' maltreatment for a good many years that cavalier attitude toward the show's scheduling eventually caught up with them. That for months into a season a fan wasn't sure whether there would be an episode on or not made that fan base quicker to wither when those fans lost the enthusiasm as the show's Golden Age ran its course, and the fans looked elsewhere for their entertainment.