There appears to be a collective disdain toward reboots in films and television, yet, at this point, Hollywood is locked into the format. Creators are reviving some of their most precious and well-…
The Hulu reboot of Matt Groening’s ‘Futurama’ is brillant but newcomers may feel alienated.
To everyone saying, “That’s a stupid take,” or, “But who cares?” Probably Hulu.
It’s a numbers thing. You have fans of Futurama, that’s one market, and you’re likely to get a good percentage of those as people coming in to watch the reboot, but not 100% of them. But if they’re the only ones who stick around to watch the full new season, that’s a really limited market. That’s a relatively teeny tiny audience. There are plenty of shows that tried to continue marketing themselves in their later seasons, especially episodic (as opposed to serial) shows. Because you always want your numbers to grow. You want to bring in new fans.
I also don’t see it being a huge thing because I don’t think a lot of people who have never heard of Futurama before are going to be particularly interested in the reboot, but the thing is that some would be. And hitting them with inside jokes that they’re not going to get without having watched the rest of the series, yeah, it’s going to make some of them turn the show off instead of going back and watching the older stuff or keeping going. We’ve seen that happen before. And that risks making the audience shrink instead of grow. That’s bad. That will probably lead to it getting canceled again. If the creators are fine with that, I as a long-term fan am going to watch the new season anyway and would prefer a good, clear artistic vision to shine through than something that’s simply looking to draw in the widest possible prospective audience, but from a publisher standpoint, from the viewpoint of a new fan, and even from the viewpoint of someone who simply wants more seasons, I can kind of understand why potentially alienating new viewers would be seen as a concern.
If the previous seasons are available to watch on Hulu as well, then dependence on those seasons might be a feature and not a bug. “Check out this new episode! Oh, there’s a joke you didn’t get, better binge the old seasons. And now that you’ve done that, gotta watch the new ones a second time to get all the jokes now!”
Certainly something I’d considered as well. Though, I would say that kind of strategy hasn’t generally proved successful in television in the past, at least not over the average. However, streaming kind of makes that a little foggier. Futurama, along with The Office, were some of the most repeatedly streamed shows on Netflix before their contracts got canceled and they were moved to Hulu (The Office eventually moving to Peacock). So while that strategy tends to not work very well, every time that it does work may be a big enough boost to retention that it’s considered a viable strategy. I don’t know, of course, since I don’t work for Hulu or in any relevant field, so it’s all amateur speculation.
To everyone saying, “That’s a stupid take,” or, “But who cares?” Probably Hulu.
It’s a numbers thing. You have fans of Futurama, that’s one market, and you’re likely to get a good percentage of those as people coming in to watch the reboot, but not 100% of them. But if they’re the only ones who stick around to watch the full new season, that’s a really limited market. That’s a relatively teeny tiny audience. There are plenty of shows that tried to continue marketing themselves in their later seasons, especially episodic (as opposed to serial) shows. Because you always want your numbers to grow. You want to bring in new fans.
I also don’t see it being a huge thing because I don’t think a lot of people who have never heard of Futurama before are going to be particularly interested in the reboot, but the thing is that some would be. And hitting them with inside jokes that they’re not going to get without having watched the rest of the series, yeah, it’s going to make some of them turn the show off instead of going back and watching the older stuff or keeping going. We’ve seen that happen before. And that risks making the audience shrink instead of grow. That’s bad. That will probably lead to it getting canceled again. If the creators are fine with that, I as a long-term fan am going to watch the new season anyway and would prefer a good, clear artistic vision to shine through than something that’s simply looking to draw in the widest possible prospective audience, but from a publisher standpoint, from the viewpoint of a new fan, and even from the viewpoint of someone who simply wants more seasons, I can kind of understand why potentially alienating new viewers would be seen as a concern.
If the previous seasons are available to watch on Hulu as well, then dependence on those seasons might be a feature and not a bug. “Check out this new episode! Oh, there’s a joke you didn’t get, better binge the old seasons. And now that you’ve done that, gotta watch the new ones a second time to get all the jokes now!”
Certainly something I’d considered as well. Though, I would say that kind of strategy hasn’t generally proved successful in television in the past, at least not over the average. However, streaming kind of makes that a little foggier. Futurama, along with The Office, were some of the most repeatedly streamed shows on Netflix before their contracts got canceled and they were moved to Hulu (The Office eventually moving to Peacock). So while that strategy tends to not work very well, every time that it does work may be a big enough boost to retention that it’s considered a viable strategy. I don’t know, of course, since I don’t work for Hulu or in any relevant field, so it’s all amateur speculation.