This just in: Friday is no longer just a ubiquitous YouTube video gone viral, it’s also a deadline.
According to The Wrap, Fox has given THE SIMPSONS’ six primary voice actors until Friday at noon to decide whether they’ll accept a salary cut of nearly 50 percent or risk turning this season into the series’ last. And while the question remains as to whether the cast — all of whom have a notorious history of rocky contract renegotiations dating back to disputes in both 1998 and 2004 — will eventually cave to Fox’s demands, the bigger question, at least from our perspective, is who do we root for?
On the one hand, despite being forced to join the show’s producers in agreeing to what on the surface seems like a massively unfair pay cut, it’s incredibly hard to sympathize with actors Dan Castellaneta (Homer, Grampa Simpson, Krusty the Clown, among others), Julie Kavner (Marge, her sisters, among others), Nancy Cartwright (Bart, among others), Yeardley Smith (Lisa), Hank Azaria (Moe Szyslak, Chief Wiggum, Apu Nahasapeemapetilo, among others), and Harry Shearer (Mr. Burns, Principal Skinner, Ned Flanders, among others) who when all is said and done would still manage to walk away with a whopping $250,000 per episode for a series that doesn’t just attract a mere a fraction of the audience it once did, but is a money loser for the Network. On the other hand, the incredibly talented voice actors are not only responsible for netting Producer 20th Century Fox billions upon billions of dollars over the course of its 23 seasons on the air, but will continue to do so in perpetuity thanks to a seemingly never-ending stream of ancillary revenues courtesy of merchandising, digital downloads and syndication fees for years to come. 
THE SIMPSONS airs Sundays at 8PM on FOX (Global TV in Canada) and features the voice talents of Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner, Nancy Cartwright, Yeardley Smith, Harry Shearer, Hank Azaria, Pamela Hayden, Tress MacNeille and more. Catch up on past episodes you may have missed for free online at clicktowatch.tv