In what may be the least surprising news ever reported by The A.V. Club, we have uncovered documented proof that people like to watch The Simpsons. In fact, people like to watch The Simpsons so much that they’re willing to climb all the way to the top of their channel listing to find FXX in order to do it. The shocking evidence behind this comes from Variety, which says the first day of FXX’s Simpsons marathon tripled its normal audience and gave the network its “most-watched day ever.”
Now, we are talking about FXX, so its “most-watched day ever” still wouldn’t necessarily be a feather in the cap of another network, but its ratings were actually good enough to make it the fifth most-watched network overall during primetime on Thursday. As Variety points out, that put it ahead of regular FX, which actually aired new episodes of Married and You’re The Worst last night. New episodes, by the way, that happened to get lower ratings than a TV show that’s old enough to rent a car. The Simpsons’ big winner on Thursday—the individual episode that earned the highest ratings—was “Itchy & Scratchy & Marge,” the one where Springfield bands together to put an end to cartoon violence.
If the quality of The Simpsons in general is anything to go by, FXX’s ratings will continue to get better and better for a few days, until the marathon reaches season 10 or so. At that point, audience numbers will gradually decline, and FXX executives will start to reminisce about how much better The Simpsons used to be. “Remember season four?” they’ll ask. “The Monorail song, dental plan, Whacking Day. Those episodes were great, ratings-wise.” Yes they were, fictional FXX executive. Now let’s finish this story so we can go back to watching the marathon.