Virtuality and the Television Audience: The Case of Futurama.

This essay examines the impact of Internet-based discourse on television audiences by examining the specific case of the recent program Futurama. Futurama has inspired the development of a vast and diverse virtual community dedicated to discussions of the program and the production of a variety of secondary discourses. The author examines the qualities of Futurama that make it a peculiarly "net ready" program. The author concludes that this community may be indicative of wider changes in the interpretation of television programming engendered by the rise of computer mediated communication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]