Watch For Your Cable Bill to Increase, The Simpsons Come to FXX

Driving Home the Money on FXX

So The Simpsons are coming to FXX this Fall. According to Deadline, FXX acquired the broadcast rights to The Simpsons from parent company, 21^st Century Fox. The off-network acquisition must have been like the young teenage son asking the dad if he could drive the Mustang, or rather, the family sedan on Friday night. With the exception that this deal is expected to reap up to 1 billion for 21^st Century Fox, driving the family car never paid off so well.

The Simpsons and Always Sunny on FXX

The deal marks the first time the show will be featured on a cable network. Since the show’s inception and throughout its 20+ years on-air, the show has always been on broadcast. FXX has also acquired VOD rights to the show, so this will also become the first time viewers at home can watch The Simpsons online, VOD, and/or a mobile device. In addition, Deadline reports that FX Networks plans to launch FXNOW, an app where the network plans to feature on-demand episodes of The Simpsons. The broadcast and VOD rights makes The Simpsons a multi-pronged earner for FXX.

The deal brings relevance to FXX which currently airs movies and Its Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Which up until now, may have been the only reason to tune-in. Increasingly, it seems that Fox Networks, like all the networks, is simply trying to build out its cache of cable nets in an effort to simply hike up the re-transmission fees from the cable and satellite companies.

In the end, this hurts the consumer because Comcast and the likes have no choice but to pass the buck. Seriously, they could not fit Always Sunny and The Simpsons on FX alone? They had to create an additional cable channel network? At least we have Ali G coming back or is that on FX?