Simpsons voices take cut, show likely ending in 2013

20th Century Fox TV has told TheWrap that even though the voice talent and producers have agreed to a pay cut for this upcoming season, the show “is no longer profitable for the network.” Reuters reports that the network has made over $1 billion in its 23 season.

From Entertainment Fix:

An unnamed executive from US network Fox reportedly told The Wrap that the broadcaster wants to make just one more season of the increasingly expensive animated sitcom, and only if it can slash production costs by around 30 per cent.

(For those playing along at home: “just one more season” would equal season 24, which would end around May 2013.)

Regarding the pay cuts taken by the voice talent and producers The Sun Times reports that the voice talent took a reported 30% cut. Voice talent Harry Shearer said he was willing to take cut of 70% for a “tiny” share of the profits gained through licensing and reruns. That suggestion was turned down. Right now only Matt Groening and James L. Brooks profit from licensing and reruns.

6 thoughts on “Simpsons voices take cut, show likely ending in 2013

  1. UPDATE: I just read the Simpsons won’t end this season and has been renewed for 2 more seasons to end with the 25th. anniversary season in 2015.;

  2. God, could you imagine voicing a character for 25 years on such a regular basis? I can’t imagine any animated show toppling The Simpsons run anytime soon.

  3. That depends on how you imagine doing the same voice for a while. Mel Blanc did the warner brother (sans a few) for longer and they only replaced him after he died. I don’t know how Hanna Barbara handled their voice talent but if they used the same voices there’s a decent chance they had the same voices for as long as the simpsons. Also I think (keyword think) that some of the Scooby Do voices are still that stuff. (Frank Welker & Kasey Kasem?)

    Either way it’s been a long long time.

  4. No, I’m pretty sure he meant Kasey Kasem, Casey’s brother, whose work was pretty much limited to making that wet flapping noise when a hound dog would shake his head and his jowls would flap.

    It did used to cause some chaos down at the studio when they’d have a jowl-flapping voice to dub in and somebody would call the wrong Kasem. Casey couldn’t make that noise at all, though he was pretty good at the hobbitahobbit noise that little goat used to make. Kasey couldn’t touch that one!

    Sometimes, after a long day, everybody’d go down to this little bar, and, after they’d had a few drinks, Kasey’s start making the jowl-flapping sound and then Casey would start going hobbitahobbita, and how everyone would laugh!

    Those Kasem brothers were quite a combination.

    Then again, maybe it was just a spelling error and not worth mentioning in the first place.

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