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In a recent Brand Keys survey among that most-desired of demographics (men and women, 18-49 years old), we asked about the animated TV series they watched most often, here’s how the top-10 ranked:
- Simpsons
- Archer
- Futurama
- Family Guy
- Bob’s Burgers
- Venture Brothers
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force
- South Park
- American Dad
- King of the Hill
You’ll probably be hearing a lot of “D’ohs!” in the near future. Not because “The Simpsons” was #1 on our list, but because the figure of one billion dollars is being floated around as regards Twentieth Television, a unit of Fox TV’s syndicated division, plan to market reruns of the network’s long-running animated comedy “The Simpsons.” Yes, a billion dollars! That’s $1,000,000,000.00.
“The Simpsons” is entering its 25th year on TV and even with 530 episodes in the can, Fox has no current plans to cancel the series. The studio first syndicated the show to TV stations 15 years ago, so syndication isn’t new. What is new is that now they would license reruns to stations and cable channels at the same time with no effects to current syndication deals.
So as new episodes appear on Fox, you’ll see them syndicated on both broadcast and cable. And if that sounds like something out of a continuous loop from an “Itchy and Scratchy” episode, you wouldn’t be wrong. With broadcast and cable needing to fill a nearly bottomless mobile-access maw 24/7/365, all the platforms are looking for new content to solve that problem. Netflix and Amazon have created their own shows, but ultimately that’s only a drop in the entertainment bucket.
The Animated Show Survey results represent responses from 4,200 respondents, and is part of Brand Keys’ soon-to-be-reported 10,000-households “2013 Back to School” Survey.
So who might end up the new proprietors of the Springfield clan? FX, another News Corp cable networks seems a likely suspect, with supposed rights of first refusal, or even their nascent comedy network, FXX. Other potential buyers could be Viacom (Comedy Central and Nick at Nite) or Turner Broadcasting. Or Netflix.
When will we learn who’ll be the new beneficiary of all this syndication content? For an answer we can only offer a quote from Homer Simpson himself: “When will I learn? The answer to life’s problems aren’t at the bottom of a bottle, they’re on TV!”
And they’re being re-run in case you missed them the first time!
Connect with Robert on LinkedIn.
Find out more about what makes customer loyalty happen and how Brand Keys metrics is able to predict future consumer behavior: brandkeys.com. Visit our YouTube channel to learn more about Brand Keys methodology, applications and case studies.
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