The Family Guy Revival Misconception

If it could be proven that enough adults enjoyed the show that they would profit of renewing the show they would and were approached for renewal when the show was fresh in the minds of the viewers. I mean while say Spongebob was obviously marketed at the kids demograph, there've been times when they throw the adult audience a bone.

Don't worry, I'm not insisting or implying that Hey Arnold would continue. I just wanted to comment on your reasoning.
 
Actually, if Hey Arnold!'s adult fanbase wants it back and they buy the DVDs and whatnot, that may end up being a bad thing - isn't that how we got the Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon? I don't even want to think of something like this becoming of Hey Arnold!, and I would like no one to reply to this paragraph for that reason.

I'd also say The Ripping Friends is another good example. It failed on Fox Kids, it failed on Adult Swim. It just plain failed, and there is no chance of revival among either demographic. And as much as the revival of Family Guy and Futurama were flukes, as stated before, their cancellations were also somewhat flukes due to bad timeslots. If enough of a fanbase shows their support, it will be revived, but that fanbase has to exist and/or be a potential fanbase. Family Guy and Futurama always had the potential fanbase, and did momentarily, and the only reason they seemed weakened was due to their timeslots. Cable and DVD proved the fanbases still existed.

And yeah, if the creator is sick of it (a la Invader Zim), no chance of revival no matter how much money it makes. And again, it does have to come from the target demographic - kids.
 
Ren & Stimpy Adult Party Cartoon was not a result of DVD sales or ratings, I believe it was Viacom trying to jumpstart their own adult animation block in 2002 and the idea for APC stemmed from them trying to come up with an already established property that would bring viewers in. Ren & Stimpy was always notorious for having a large adult following, so it seemed like a logical choice, the show had also been off Nickelodeon airwaves since 2000. Ren & Stimpy didn't come to DVD until 2005 I believe.
 
That's also another reason(besides the Turner/WB feud) why Cartoon Network hasn't put the Looney Tunes back on the channel. Yeah, that New Years marathon got good ratings, but most of the viewers were adults, and CN knew it. To them, it doesn't matter that people like me are screaming to put the Looney Tunes back on CN, to them it matters if the kids are screaming for their return, which they're not.

Oh, and as for Futurama's road to return being as rocky as it was, the fact that Matt G and David X. Cohen were more hesitant to resurrect their show than Seth MacFarlane was to resurrect Family Guy also contributed to it's tough return. Matt and David have always wanted to resurrect the franchise, they just weren't sure how or where to do it. I know Matt has talked about doing a threatical film, but for now they have settled for some DTV movies and one new season on Comedy Central. I think their mindset is just to take it one step at a time.
 
I honestly think that Matt Groening and David X. Cohen are taking an intelligent approach at resurrecting Futurama. I honestly think that Futurama hasn't dramatically changed with the DTV Movies. In fact, if memory serves, Bender's Big Score, The Beast with a Billion Backs, Bender's Game and Into the Wild Green Yonder are supposedly Futurama's fifth season combined with all four movie releases to be later cut up into individual episodes, with a little added content to make the episodic mini-series have better flow to the fifth season. However, I may be wrong here.

Regarding Invader Zim: It has already been established that there are no plans to revive this show, despite it's fanbase, that and we already know Vasquez's sentiments about working with Nickelodeon again, and frankly, I cannot say that I blame him for hating Invader Zim and Nickelodeon.

Regarding Hey Arnold! -- I honestly was hoping to see the Spinoff that was centered around Helga Pataki and her dysfunctional family, but that's not going to happen anytime soon.

However I will agree that if there is a large potential fanbase that's willing to make mountains move to get their favourite show back on the air, it will happen. The fans just have to be there, otherwise, it's just another online petition with five signatures wanting something that's never going to happen, unless you're into fanmade concepts that're nowhere near as good as the original show was for its time.
 
I think this is a good thread to bring up the Home Movies anomaly. A show that was canceled after a few episodes on a small network that nobody remembered, was brought back by another network and ran for 52 episodes gaining a cult following.

I don't think there is another show that has followed this example, but maybe this is what the Goode Family producers are hoping for. But this anomaly is even rarer than the Family Guy example.
 
Home Movies was another example of something that was the right place, right time. Mike Lazzo must have been a huge fan of the series and wanted it on Adult Swim. It also was incredibly cheap to make in flash. The Goode Family has no chance especially because it's traditionally animated which is very expensive to produce.
If Drawn Together, a series which pulled in huge ratings every week, can't survive on cable due to production costs, than a series with a horrible track record as is would never see the light of day.
 
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