South Park Misses Deadline for First Time in 17 Seasons

For 17 years South Park creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone have been making new episodes for their hit TV show, totaling 240 episodes to date. But yesterday (October 16) for the first time in the shows long history, South Park missed the deadline.

If you're like me you were sitting on the couch last night expecting to see the brand new episode "Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers," but instead we were created to the classic episode “Scott Tenorman Must Die.” It's a good episode but it definitely wasn't a brand new episode like we were waiting on. So what happened?

Well first off, South Park is unlike any other animated show on television. In order to remain topical, one of the aspects that make the show so great, Parker and Stone have created a brand new episode every week in only six days. That means that the day after a new episode airs, the team is already hard at work on the next episode. Most animated shows take months to make just one episode.

So what happened that the extremely experienced team at South Park Studios missed their first deadline in their long and glorious history? Keep in mind they have always been on time, even if that means sending the finished episode to Comedy Central only hours before its scheduled air time.

According to a statement released by Comedy Central, South Park Studios completely lost all power for three hours on Tuesday, causing the episode to not be finished in time to be put on air. Here's the statement, “From animation to rendering to editing and sound, all of their computers were down for hours and they were unable to finish episode 1704 ‘Goth Kids 3: Dawn of the Posers’ in time for air tonight.”

Parker spoke out on the missed deadline saying, “It sucks to miss an air date but after all these years of tempting fate by delivering the show last minute, I guess it was bound to happen.”

At least we won't miss the new episode completely. Its scheduled to go on in its usual spot, next Wednesday at nine o'clock.