“Monday Night Football” will play in Springfield as the NFL, Disney and ESPN will premiere “The Simpsons Funday Football“—an animated “alternative viewing experience” for viewers of the Dec. 9 Cincinnati Bengals-Dallas Cowboys game—on Disney+ and ESPN+.

“The Simpsons Funday Football” is a real-time, animated version of the Bengals-Cowboys telecast that will air alongside the traditional broadcast set in the cartoon world of the long-running Fox adult animation series. The animated version will be created using Sony’s Beyond Sports Technology.

This is the second consecutive year ESPN, Disney and the NFL have presented a Funday Football telecast. ESPN’s first Funday Football telecast, featuring characters from Pixar’s “Toy Story,” received numerous Sports Emmys and produced record viewing on Disney+.

“The Simpsons Funday Football” alternate viewing presentation will stream on Disney+ and ESPN+ and, on mobile, with NFL+. The traditional “Monday Night Football” telecast will be available on ESPN, ABC and ESPN Deportes, alongside the Peyton and Eli Manning-hosted “Manningcast” on ESPN2. All four telecasts, which start at 8 p.m. (ET), will be available on ESPN+ and in the ESPN App.

As part of the effort, the creators of “The Simpsons” have collaborated on look, sound and feel with ESPN and the NFL.

Using Sony’s technologies, each Bengals and Cowboys player will appear as a motion-enabled, animated player. Through state-of-the-art tracking technology enabled by the NFL’s Next Gen Stats, Sony’s Beyond Sports, combined with Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations’ optical tracking, will let fans see every snap, run, pass, score and more from the real-life Bengals and Cowboys matchup at AT&T Stadium as it happens.

Sony’s Beyond Sports makes it possible to combine the two data sources; analyze, validate, enhance and translate them to a 3D environment; and stream them to a desired platform in real time. Optical tracking from Sony’s Hawk-Eye Innovations creates dynamic player and character movement, including detailed limb movement and mannerisms.

The animated game telecast will be set in Springfield’s Atoms Stadium and feature characters from the series. As part of the action, Bart Simpson will side with Joe Burrow and the Bengals while Homer aligns with Dak Prescott and the Cowboys. For most of the game, Bart and Homer will let their new Bengals and Cowboys teammates manage the action, but the father-and-son duo will select key opportunities to play offense or defense, replacing a player and joining his other 10 teammates on the field.

Surrounding the gameplay, Marge and Lisa will interview players during the game and Maggie will fly the SkyCam. “Simpsons” voiceover actors Hank Azaria, Nancy Cartwright, Dan Castellaneta, Julie Kavner and Yeardley Smith will voice several of their characters in prerecorded bits and skits.

In addition to the live game, “Simpsons” producers have written original content for the telecast that will be used before, during and after the game.

Animated segments incorporating ESPN personalities Stephen A. Smith, Peyton and Eli Manning and more will also appear in the telecast, with their segments written by “The Simpsons” production team.

Players from both teams will have prerecorded segments that include interactions with “Simpsons” characters.

“The Simpsons Funday Football” will have its own animated commentators, as ESPN’s “Simpsons” enthusiasts, Mina Kimes and Dan Orlovsky, will provide football strategy discussion with Drew Carter calling the game action.

Kimes, Orlovsky and Carter will be animated in the style of the show and don ESPN Edge Innovation Partner’s Meta Quest Pro headsets to experience the game from Springfield, thanks to VR technology and Sony’s Beyond Sports’ Virtual Commentator Technology.

Internationally, the special presentation will be available on linear or streaming in more than 145 markets live and/or via replay. Among those, all of Latin America, including Mexico and Brazil; the Caribbean; Australia and New Zealand; The Netherlands; sub-Saharan Africa; and Canada (via domestic sports network TSN). Video-on-demand will also be available 12 hours after the live broadcast ends in these and other markets.

LOS ANGELES—Fox Entertainment and Hulu have signed a new multi-year content deal and an extensive multi-platform strategic marketing alliance that will keep Fox’s primetime shows on the streaming platform. 

As usual financial terms of the carriage deal were not disclosed. 

Under the terms of the agreement, all Fox primetime entertainment programming – ranging from "Family Guy" and "The Cleaning Lady" to "The Masked Singer" and "Next Level Chef" -- will continue to stream on Hulu the next day following its linear telecast. 

Additionally, the deal includes a major marketing alliance, whereby Fox and Hulu will work together on messaging for Fox's live and on-demand content.

When Disney bought most of 21st Century Fox’s assets, it got Fox’s stake in Hulu, giving it majority control, and studio operations that produce a number of Fox shows. 

“Our long-standing, valued partnership with Hulu consistently generates impressive results and creates an important pathway for our scripted, unscripted and animated series to maximize viewer reach,” said Rob Wade, CEO of Fox Entertainment. “Under this new deal, Fox solidifies its longer-term streaming strategy, while harnessing the power and strength of both Hulu and Fox to better serve our audiences and bring visibility to premium content across our streaming and linear platforms.”

“Continuing to be the next-day streaming home for current Fox hits, along with out-of-season episodes of well-loved Fox titles, reinforces Hulu’s unique position in the streaming space – as the only SVOD service to carry next-day series from multiple broadcast networks,” said Joe Earley, president of Hulu. “Fox has always been a great partner, but now Rob and his teams are leveling-up our relationship with their new marketing commitments, helping viewers understand where they can watch all of these shows.”

The new deal follows the major program output deal between the two companies unveiled last February that allows Hulu to stream all out-of-season episodes of key Fox unscripted and animated programs.

Fox’s series produced by Disney Television Studios include "9-1-1", "9-1-1: Lone Star" and "The Resident", and the animated series "The Simpsons", "Family Guy", "Bob’s Burgers" and "The Great North".

The Walt Disney Co. said that its upcoming Disney+ streaming service will be advertising free when it launches on Nov. 12.

The price is being set at $6.99 a month and $69.99 a year, undercutting Netflix, the leading streaming service that Disney is looking to compete with.

The company said it expects to have between 60 million and 90 million subscribers worldwide, with one-third of those subscribers coming from the U.S. with the rest in international markets.

With cash spending of more than $1 billion on original content planned for 2020, rising to the mid-$2 billion range, Disney+ will have operational losses. It is expected to turn profitable in 2024, said Disney CFO Christine McCarthy.

Disney+ will feature content from National Geographic Channel, one of the businesses acquired when Disney bought 21st Century Fox assets for $71 billion.

The service will also be the exclusive streaming home of The Simpsons, the long-running Fox Broadcast series.

Disney on Thursday held an investor day on a sound stage at its Burbank studios to lay out its direct to consumer strategy which, in addition to Disney+, includes Hulu (Disney now owns 60% of the streaming service), ESPN+ and Hotstar in India.

Those products are being offered separately for now, but a lower priced bundle featuring all of the products is likely to be introduced in the near future, executives said.

Disney CEO Bob Iger said the presentation, kicked off with a 15 minute video showing the breadth of Disney’s content, was designed to give investors “a strong sense of what we can do and what we’re building from.”

While Iger said the entertainment industry was going through a challenging time, with an extraordinary pace of change, deciding on a strategy to deal with it was not difficult.

“The best approach was to focus on … creating great content and distributing it in innovative ways," he said. "It’s that simple.”

Iger said that strategy would enable the 96-year-old company to “thrive and grow and be more relevant than ever as we enter our second century.”

Kevin Mayer, who is in charge of Disney’s Direct-to-Consumer and International Division, noted that the explosive growth in the number of people with connectivity to stream high-quality video was leading to a 37% increase in video subscriptions.

Content consumption was also going up at a 50% rate, expected to hit 1.2 billion hours per day in 2020.

While the streaming business is growing, it is also becoming more crowded, and in a crowded market, brands matter. “We have the brands that matter most to consumers when it comes to great entertainment,” he said.

Mayer said that Disney+ is “obviously a global product” that was expected to be rolled out everywhere.

ESPN+, which was launched a year ago, now has 2 million subscribers. Mayer said it could soon be launched in Latin America.

Mayer also said Disney was “actively evaluating” an international rollout for Hulu.

LOS ANGELES—“Simpsons” fans can now stream the entire series on their Apple TVs with the launch of the FXNOW App for the streaming device. In addition to “The Simpsons,” the FX Network authenticated app will provide access to many of its other series, including “Fargo,” “American Horror Story,” “Archer,” “Louie,” and “The People v. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story.”

TV Technology sister publication Multichannel News has the whole story.

LOS ANGELES—In the 25 years that “The Simpsons” has been on the air, there isn’t much that the show hasn’t done. It’s won awards; it’s become a cultural landmark; it successfully spun off onto the big screen. But even after all that, “The Simpsons” is still finding ways to innovate and it will do so again on May 15 when it will become the first ever animated show to broadcast live.

Homer will answer audience questions live on May 15 (Photo credit: FoxFlash)

In the episode titled “Simprovised,” written by John Frink, Homer Simpson will be featured in a three minute segment at the end of the episode that will have voice-performer Dan Castellaneta use motion capture technology from Adobe to bring the animated patriarch live to audiences. The segment will be broadcast live twice, once for the east coast and once for the west, and will see Castellaneta respond to calls and Twitter questions on current issues from Homer’s unique point of view.

Executive Producer Al Jean said this has been an idea that has floated around “The Simpsons” writer’s room for some time, originally being thought of during the run-up to “The Simpsons Movie” in 2007. “But at that point we looked at motion capture technology and we didn’t really think that it was up to it,” said Jean. Now, seeing how the same Adobe technology has been employed by others like Fox Sports to capture actors without using electrical hook-ups, Jean and company thought the timing was finally right. “We looked at what we had and we thought this will be convincing.”

Jean says that preparation for the episode has gone smoothly. The traditional animation for the segment has already been completed and there have been no real issues with the technology. Of course, the real test will be when things go live, but Jean is confident and believes that even if there is a little mistake, “that’ll even be better,” as it will help prove that the event was in fact live.

Don’t expect to see a full live episode of “The Simpsons” any time soon, however.

“I don’t think you’d want to see it for 30 minutes,” Jean said. “I think it’s great for three… but you wouldn’t be able to have the character interact with anybody else; you could have people talking, but not interacting… You couldn’t really do a fully animated show like this.”

Another new and exciting technology that has many people in the TV industry talking is virtual and augmented reality. “The Simpsons” will cover the VR buzz in an upcoming episode, where Montgomery Burns gets an Oculus Rift device, but as far as integrating the technology someway into the show or as a promotional tool, Jean says there are no immediate plans.

How will these new technologies be integrated into TV going forward? Jean isn’t sure, but he is excited to see where it progresses.

“There’s a new frontier, somebody’s going to conquer it,” he said. “I’m just glad we’re the first to do it for an animated show.”