The Simpsons in the UK

The vast majority of episodes after season 11 are poor at best, and horrendous at worst (and 10 and 11 have a a lot of stinkers too). The fact it's still running 20 years after then is a suprising question.

Yeah, it was only added to All 4 recently, when Disney+ launched. Disney, Sky, and Channel 4 did a deal, granting both of them the streaming rights they'd always lacked. All 4 should now have recently aired episodes, while Sky has the entire Disney+ service, including all Simpsons episodes.

Remember the tongue-in-cheek apology they ran during the break? I've got that on tape somewhere

Remember when they used the live-action opening from the Sky One promo for this episodes intro?

Not sure about that, I'm sure C4 hadn't shown Family Guy for many years when it started on BBC2. As far as I know, BBC2 bought the rights to American Dad, which they showed for the first time on British TV, and Family Guy got bundled in within it (much like how ITV2 have them all now). At the time American Dad got the lion's share of the promotion and they were shown back to back on Saturday nights, for a few weeks at least - https://genome.ch.bbc.co.uk/schedules/bbctwo/england/2005-10-22#at-22.05

As you say, the last episode of The Simpsons on BBC2 was in May 2004, that was a repeat, and the last new episode was in January of that year. From around early 2003, BBC2 would often take The Simpsons off for a week or two to try and launch something else to potentially replace it, not that they ever really found anything, so for the last few months they were really rationing it.



Yes, although that was pretty much only there as a spoiler for the appalling ITV sitcom Babes In The Wood. They showed about half a dozen episodes in the 9pm slot but seemingly it didn't rate any better there than it did at 6pm, so they just kept it there. It was presumably also easier to show 22-minute shows at 6pm where there were loads more imports and less requirement to shove in filler shows to fill up a half hour slot. As mentioned, C4 also seemed to find 6pm did just as well as 9pm.

Never understood why there was such a lag between The Simpsons airing on Sky and then on terrestrial TV. In the 90s about six months seemed to be the standard when the likes of Friends and ER premiered on Sky then aired on C4, so for The Simpsons to be about 5 years behind - and still be 5 years behind, is somewhat of the exception.

Simpsons didn't appear on terrestrial until 1996- nearly 7 years after it began! Clearly some strange thing to do with the contracts.

Do they still have it so that Channel 4 and Sky One aren't showing the same seasons at the same time, or did that stop? I admit I stopped paying attention to that years ago. But it always seemed to be the case where BBC/Channel 4 had the rights to so many seasons, and Sky One would have the rest, and occasionally seasons switched between channels.

Is the Channel 4 deal with The Simpsons a lifetime deal or can Disney in theory sell them again in the future?

IIRC C4 can only show 5 archive seasons at any point. along with their "new" season.

I assume Sky just wanted to keep the exclusive rights for as long as possible, and paid enough money to allow that to be the case, much like how in recent years they've bought both the pay and free TV rights for programmes with no intention of making them available free, just to stop another channel having them.

Some of those shows do sometimes, very belatedly, get shown free on Pick.

True enough, but as you say, not until many years later. Sky's absolute priority is to keep them behind the paywall on Sky for as long as possible.