Australian Simpsons News
First Half, 2002

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16th June, 2002 This site will be sadly unattended until late August or September. Although it's impossible to accurately predict free-to-air scheduling so far in advance, I expect that new episodes of The Simpsons may return to Ten once Big Brother wraps up in a few weeks' time. As for Foxtel, I've tried to make some predictions for July through September, but I've found it impossible to get any reliable information from the channel itself, so keep a sharp eye on your Foxtel Guide and the website. Unfortunately, I'm already out of date, as a completely new stream of The Simpsons starts on Monday, 8th July: FOX8 regains the rights to the first two seasons and starts playing them weekdays, five episodes a day, from 9:00am to 11:00am. I'm sorry, but I really don't have time to update the site to reflect this new stream. Failing pre-emptions, the remainder of my information should prove accurate until my next update. However, be aware that the renewed availability of Seasons One and Two may invalidate my data for the daily 6:00pm stream from the 8th August. Happy viewing!

30th May, 2002 Only a couple of things to note regarding The Simpsons on Foxtel in June. First, the repeat timeslots will be pre-empted on Sunday, 9th June by a Sex and the City marathon. As a result, the Sunday 8:00pm timeslot lists the wrong episodes from the 16th (in the printed Foxtel Guide). In actual fact, Sundays at 8:00pm will return to the start of Season Twelve on the 9th (rather than the 16th). Second, The City of New York vs Homer Simpson (4F22) seems to have been pulled out of the strip for now, so this Friday at 6:00pm the next episode in the sequence, The Principal and the Pauper (4F23), will actually air. I expect this pattern to continue (specifically on the 11th August and 26th September). Third, with Season Twelve airing in its own timeslot on Sundays, this season hasn't yet been introduced into the strip. Hence, for example, on the morning of Saturday, 1st June, Season Eleven will conclude, then wrap around to Season Three. Finally, with Sofcom having discontinued its personalised news service, I've removed the "Simpsons This Week" link from the front page. I discovered that yourTV can provide a similar service, though email alerts are daily rather than weekly. I'm still new to the site myself, so can't really recommend it.

16th May, 2002 The Simpsons is back on Ten next Wednesday, but it's only a repeat (actually the one originally scheduled three weeks ago). I don't pretend to understand.

10th May, 2002 Despite doing well in the ratings, new episodes of The Simpsons are taking something of a back seat to Big Brother at the moment on Ten. Perhaps their previous experience highlighted that Big Brother didn't do much to keep viewers switched on for the rest of the night, but they figure more Big Brother will. Whatever the reason, this week's Wednesday Simpsons episode was pre-empted (a repeat was scheduled, in any case), and so is next week's.

3rd May, 2002 Season Two of The Simpsons is due out on DVD on the 6th August in the US and Canada. I'm very impressed with the amount of bonus material promised, including audio commentary, an interview with the creators, the two music videos and a whole heap of other stuff. How much of this makes it onto the Australian release remains to be seen, but I'll make a hopeful prediction by saying only the Simpsons ads are likely to be cut (since they're for products not available Down Under). Based on the Season One release, expect the Australian version in September. Another repeat episode on Ten next Wednesday. But Ten will be showing three episodes of The Simpsons next Saturday, 11th, from 6:00pm. The first forms part of the regular strip, while the next two are a "Simpsons Hour" unto themselves. None of these will be airing in Melbourne, nor presumably other AFL regions. I hope that my asterisk notations are clear enough: I don't really want to be looking for information in every region, particularly when it's not always available. Suffice to say, if I've put an asterisk next to an episode code, that episode is definitely not on in Melbourne; in other regions, check your local guide. It seems likely that FOX8 will continue to replace The City of New York vs Homer Simpson (4F22) with other episodes for the moment. This suggests that when Season Nine is eventually released on DVD, the episode may be censored. I don't consider it highly likely (for one thing, it could be five years before this happens), but I recommend some careful checking before discarding your video recordings. Who knows: the whole incident might qualify for the director's commentary track on the DVD! One final point, I've recently become aware that the tenth season finale is entitled "Thirty Minutes Over Tokyo" (AABF20) rather than "Thirty Minutes To Tokyo." I apologise for the error (I think my original source must have had a typo and I never picked up on it), and have now corrected all mentions on the website.

29th April, 2002 Interestingly, on Saturday FOX8 replaced The City of New York vs Homer Simpson (4F22) with Beyond Blunderdome (AABF23). Presumably a result of the central role played by the New York World Trade Centre in the former episode, it's nevertheless hard to fathom what exactly might have caused offence. One can only hope that the episode will be reinstated to the running order. Otherwise, this begins to smell unpleasantly like historical revisionism. Personally, I'd rather commemorate an impressive edifice that suffered a tragic ending than pretend that it never existed. We'll see what happens on the 31st May. I've also updated the missing episodes from Ten's strip over the past week.

26th April, 2002 Ten's airing a repeat, Wednesday next week. No idea why (I thought school holidays were over). They're also doing something funny in those regions that get Simpsons episodes on a Saturday (eg: Sydney). If anyone knows which episodes aired/will air around 6:00pm on Sat 20th April, Wed 24th April or Sat 27th April (I believe the latter will feature a double episode), please . Meanwhile on FOX8, there's no changes or pre-emptions to the normal running order of all four streams in May. The appropriate pages have been updated, including predictions for June. On a procedural note, I've moved Ten's Sunday timeslots in with the 6:00pm strip. Although the Sunday episodes don't quite fit into the order, they are from the same season, and the strip's not exactly running in order, anyway. Note that it will be returning to the start of Season Two next week. Oh, and Ten seems to have abandoned the voting for Friday's episode after just one week.

18th April, 2002 I apologise that I don't have time for a full update this week. Suffice to say that the timeslots are all the same -- please check local guides for episode specifics. I'll be back with a full update next week. I will note that I saw New Kids on the Blecch (CABF12) for the first time on Sunday (FOX8). What a dreadful episode! Not only was the "humour" tasteless (even more so after the 11th September), it wasn't even funny. It might have worked if it were more subtle, but really -- what were they thinking?

11th April, 2002 During Wednesday's new episode of The Simpsons on Ten, there was a Pepsi ad suggesting you could select which episode you wanted to see on Friday by calling 1902-555-616. The choices were as follows: 12th April, 2002 No. Code Title 1 BABF03 Eight Misbehavin' 2 BABF11 Missionary: Impossible 3 BABF12 Pygmoelian The thing is, the TV guides are already listing episodes for tomorrow. One might construe that Pygmoelian (BABF12) won the poll and that the voting is restricted to callers on Wednesday night. If so, and this interests you, I suggest calling promptly this week. I'll try to post the details of the selections each week for as long as this continues, but it's likely that if you wait for me, you'll be too late.

5th April, 2002 There's an extra Simpsons episode on Ten this weekend, at 6:30pm Sunday; until I know more about the future of this timeslot, I've listed it amongst the Friday repeats. And don't forget: we're back to new episodes of The Simpsons next Wednesday.

28th March, 2002 Premiere seems to be here to stay, interrupting The Simpsons' 6:00pm strip on Sundays. But next week, AFL will likewise pre-empt the strip on Monday and Saturday in Melbourne (and elsewhere). The new episodes of The Simpsons are rating particularly well this year, with last week's Wednesday episode coming in 5th in Melbourne! That certainly gels with my own feeling that this is a better season than some, even if each episode is not particularly memorable. On Foxtel, there don't seem to be any changes to The Simpsons in April, but I haven't yet had time to update relevant parts of the website.

21st March, 2002 Looks like last Saturday's 7:30pm timeslot on Ten was a once-off. Next week, Wednesday features an Easter holiday-inspired repeat (probably the same the following week), and the strip goes a bit haywire, partially jumping to Season Eight. The Episode List has been updated for the remainder of Season Thirteen (sorry that the Guide is so out of date), though the order and break between seasons may yet change.

14th March, 2002 Ten's screening an extra episode of The Simpsons this week, 7:30pm Saturday. I've included it in the Friday stream, for now, assuming it's a once-off. Ten's also picked up Foxtel's entertainment news show, Premiere, and is airing it Sunday at 6:00pm. The resulting loss of Sunday's instalment is likely to spell the end of the seven day Simpsons strip.

7th March, 2002 It was brought to my attention that my old address at Sofcom wasn't redirecting visitors correctly to my new location at Tripod. Hopefully that's been fixed now. I apologise for not checking this thoroughly, and welcome any new or newly returned visitors! The Green Guide's been printing Melbourne ratings info the last couple of weeks, and the interesting thing is that The Simpsons are still consistently in the top 20 -- even the top 10. That, despite the fact I've heard a fair bit of talk that the series isn't what it once was. Personally, I'm enjoying the new episodes, but it's probably because I lowered my expectations in Seasons Eight and Nine (which look a lot better on a second or third viewing). What more can you ask from a series in its thirteenth season?

1st March, 2002 The new episode order for The Simpsons on FOX8, that came into force when they lost the rights to the first two seasons, is being considered a "correction." This despite the fact it doesn't actually bring it exactly in line with any of the other versions that have been used over the years, on any channel. Nonetheless, this episode order will be retained for the forseeable future. My Foxtel Master Episode Order has been adjusted accordingly.

28th February, 2002 Foxtel's not making any major changes to its Simpsons line-up in March, though the Sunday night repeat timeslot moves from 2:30am to 3:00am on the 10th March. More importantly, the altered episode order that FOX8 have been using since they lost the rights to the first two seasons continues. Hopefully, I'll be able to get to the bottom of this, and determine if it's a temporary aberration or a permanent change. I wanted to apologise that the site hasn't been working quite right. It seems I somehow forgot to upload the newest version of my JavaScript file, so some of the functions didn't exist to create certain navigation bars. That should be fixed now. Also, thanks to Elle for picking up a broken link in my Links section. That's now been removed.

17th February, 2002 It seems Ten's 6:00pm strip is still airing daily in some cities. In Melbourne (and some other regions), the strip will be pre-empted on Saturday and/or Sunday at times due to football coverage. When these episodes are pre-empted in Melbourne, I will still list the episode title, but with a star next to the code. I won't be trying to figure out which regions will and won't be airing The Simpsons in these timeslots, however. Thanks to Peter for the tip.

15th February, 2002 My computer's been down with the heat, so just a quick update. I'm not sure what's happening in the longer term, but Ten's dropped The Simpsons' 6:00pm timeslot over this weekend.

7th February, 2002 Season Thirteen premieres on Ten at 7:30pm, Wednesday, 13th February! Meanwhile, Ten's strip expands to include Sunday (now 6:00pm every day -- though the order's a bit messy over the weekend), and the Saturday 8:00pm timeslot seems unlikely to continue. Site News: Previous Month/Next Month functionality has been restored, by way of JavaScript. This means you need at least a 2.0-series browser, but it's much simpler and more transparent than the Perl/CGI solution I'd been using. Now that I've discovered the wonders of JavaScript, I'll be converting a number of aspects of the site over, including most of the iconic navigation. Of course, every page is still accessible without these navigation bars, if not as easily. For most of you, you won't even notice the difference!

31st January, 2002 Welcome to our new location for everyone who's rediscovering the site for the first time since the move. Sofcom has been able to set up some redirection, which should solve one problem. I still haven't had time to adapt the pages entirely to our new location, so please bear with me. I'm also still looking for an Australian alternative to Tripod. Just a reminder: please change your bookmarks to http://simpsonsgazette.tripod.com. With ratings recommencing on Sunday, 10th February, Ten seems likely to start airing Season Thirteen of The Simpsons on Wednesday, 13th. More on that next week. In the meantime, they've squeezed in another timeslot, 8:00pm Saturdays, airing Season Seven episodes a couple of slots ahead of the second timeslot on Fridays. On FOX8, I failed to catch that the first run on cable of Season Twelve includes a repeat timeslot: Sundays at 8:00pm & 2:30am. Although the "Simpsons Summerfest" ends tomorrow, the other four streams will all continue through February. However, there's a few deviations -- probably temporary -- in the episode order, mostly in the 6:00pm stream. The episodes are switched on Tuesday and Wednesday, 5th-6th February; likewise on Monday and Tuesday, 18th-19th February. Then, on Friday, 22nd February, "Krusty Gets Kancelled" (9F19) airs three days early, pushing the next two episodes back a day. As occurred in January, "When Flanders Failed" (7F23) will air three episodes into Season Three rather than as the first episode. This will occur in the weekend morning stream on Saturday, 16th February. FOX8 have been alerted, and the correct order will most likely be restored the next time these episodes air.

17th January, 2002 I'm sorry to announce that Sofcom and myself have parted ways. They're changing their focus, of which the recent problems have been but a symptom. I'm reasonably happy with Tripod, for now, though I'd love an equivalent service hosted in Australia, if anyone knows of one. There are going to be some teething problems with the transition, as I change the structure of the pages and remove the last traces of Sofcom. Hopefully, however, the result will be a cleaner presentation than you've been used to. The biggest problems are that the monthly archive script won't initially work properly, and since Sofcom no longer has control over the simpsons.sofcom.com domain name, I'm unable to redirect my previous visitors to the new location -- if you're reading this, congratulations on finding us again! In the meantime, there's a few things to note (a bit belatedly, due to illness) with The Simpsons in January. First up, Ten has combined the 7:30pm Wednesday and Friday timeslots into one. However, I couldn't be bothered doing so myself, so the schedules will stay separate for now (I don't know that it makes much difference). Suffice to say that Season Ten is screening first at 7:30pm both days. On Foxtel, The Simpsons Summerfest is screening four, selected episodes from all seasons (including the first appearance of a lone, Season Twelve episode) from 9:00am to 11:00am, weekdays. That's in addition to all the other streams! The Summerfest runs from Monday, 7th January through to Friday, 1st February.

Australian Simpsons News Archive: Second Half, 2001.