Simpsons - still going strong

Arabized Simpsons?

Homer no longer drinks beer, eats bacon, donuts, or Hangs out at Moe's. I understand they need to change things for "religious" (*cough* bullshit. It shouldn't matter what you believe, don't be scared by seeing another opinion, or even laughing at it!) regions to broadcast in the Mideast, but come on. These changes undermine Homer.

Anyhoo, I was watching Simpsons the other night (the Jailbird episodes), and Dani mentioned something very "deep".

How can Simpsons go 17 seasons so far, and still going strong? Shouldn't they have ran out of material? A lot of the new episodes "suck" though, don't they? Then why are a handful of episodes of the latter seasons still "classic" type Simpsons?

A possible answer: Simpsons is moving to an almost SNL style comedy. 80% of the episodes being made are topical/new events/political type humour that there is always more of, and a handful each season are "story/plot" driven "classics" like most from seasons 1-10. This ensures they don't have to try to "stretch" the ideas they have for plot/story episodes every season to fit all 23/24 episodes. This is perfect for me: the topical humour ones are okay to watch once, and the "classic" ones from the newer seasons go into syndication (which seems to be the case already.)

This is the first I had heard of this.

Of course, another 2 other plausible reasons for the show continuing on are:
- Fox makes $$$, thus they keep it going regardless of how good/bad the new episodes are.
- The creators want to break all the milestones ;)

Or, like most things, the truth lies somewhere in between.