With the cast of The Simpsons holding out for more money, Fox is beginning to map strategies for doing without prime-time’s top ‘toon, including moving some of its best performers into the breach. The six actors haven’t shown up to work for a month, stalling production of the 16th season. They have completed work on six episodes for next season, including the annual “Treehouse of Horror” episode. With postseason baseball delaying The Simpsons’ start until November, Fox should have enough episodes until January. But each week that passes puts the rest of the season further in the hole. Because it takes nine months after recording voices to send the tracks overseas and have scenes animated, the next season likely will be shortened from the usual 22 episodes. None of the alternatives are particularly attractive to Fox.:
• Move American Idol or That ’70s Show to Sunday at 8 pm. Idol is set to start its next season in January, so the timing would work well.
Losing The Simpsons, even temporarily, would leave a huge hole in Fox’s schedule. Despite a 15% ratings decline this season, The Simpsons ranks second only to Idol in the network’s lineup. Ending the show “would essentially be saying the young-adult audience is up for grabs on Sunday night.”
• Replace lead voices. Producers killed off Maude Flanders when actress Maggie Roswell demanded more money in 1999. Yet it’s highly unlikely that Fox would seek to replace the lead roles, because new voices would seem jarring to fans.
Few in the TV business expect the impasse to last long enough to call any of these contingencies into play, or to lead the studio to shelve the series entirely. The Simpsons, Fox TV’s most valuable asset, brings in $2.5 billion each year.
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