This is a great The Onion A.V. Club | Feature:
The Onion: At what point did you realize Futurama wasn’t going to make it?
Billy West: When they’d say, “Seven o’clock, Futurama. At 8 o’clock, The Simpsons. At 8:30, Malcolm In The Middle. Remember, it all begins at 8 on Fox!” [Laughs.] That’s about the size of it. Matt had total autonomy, pretty much. They let him do what he wanted to do, and the show was becoming a success. People were finding it, and Fox kept trying to hide it because they couldn’t have control over it.
Billy West is the voice of Fry, Zoidberg, Dr. Farnsworth, Ren, and Stimpy, among others. This interview is great because it points to how incredibly stupid the upper management in the big media companies can be. They ruin their products by trying to have too much control over the product.
Futurama is probably one of my all-time favorite animated shows. Just great. I wrote a review of it when it first emerged and started loving it more and more as time went on…
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