Matt Groening's brilliant and wacky animated science fiction satire Futurama is heading from the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim to Comedy Central.  Futurama and The Family Guy have been the anchors of the popular late night Adult Swim block, but Fry, Bender, Leela, Zoidberg and the rest of Groening's creations will be making their cable TV home on Comedy Central beginning in January of 2008.  According to Variety, Comedy Central is paying more for Futurama ($400,000 per episode for a 5-year cable exclusive) than it has paid out for any rerun series in its 14-year history.  The reason -- Futurama attracts the coveted 18-24 year-old male viewers.  Currently Comedy Central is number one among cable networks in attracting that demographic during the primetime hours and clearly wants to maintain and (if possible) extend its dominance.

Futurama, which ran for five years on the Fox network (1999-2003), is currently available on DVD -- and Bongo publishes an excellent series of Futurama comic books and graphic novels.  Thanks to the Comedy Central acquisition, this property is going to remain highly visible on cable (and in syndication, which isn't proscribed by the Comedy Central agreement) for the rest of the decade and beyond.