Did you know that The Simpsons is still running? The show is coming up on the end of its 26th season, the finale of which will be its 574th broadcast episode.

Did you know that The Simpsons was recently renewed for two more years? Seasons 27 and 28 were picked up earlier this month.

And did you know that Harry Shearer, one of the six principal voice actors and the person behind Mr. Burns, Smithers, Ned Flanders, Principal Skinner, Dr. Hibbert, and literally dozens of other recurring and one-shot characters, just announced that he'll be leaving the show? He won't be joining the rest of the cast for the 27th and 28th seasons, and longtime showrunner Al Jean has already confirmed to CNN Money that his characters will now be voiced by "the most talented members of the voice-over community." Whether anyone will be able to tell the diddly-ifference remains to be seen.

The Simpsons has lost voice actors before—Phil Hartman passed away between the show's ninth and tenth seasons and Marcia Wallace died in 2013—but in both cases their characters were quietly and respectfully retired. Voice actress Maggie Roswell left for a handful of seasons but later returned (albeit not before one of her characters was killed off). Shearer's departure leaves a much larger hole in the show's universe, so a quiet retirement is apparently out of the question for most of his characters.

Of course, for many, many people, Shearer's absence from the voice cast will be moot. The Simpsons' golden era (which ran for several years somewhere between seasons two and ten, depending on whom you ask) is so far behind it that even people on the Internet are tired of arguing about whether it's good anymore. It showed some brief signs of life in the 2007 movie and the season or two that immediately followed it, but for most of the last 15-or-so years it has been content in its not-unpleasant but inarguably bland and maddeningly inconsistent rut.

Shearer has long been critical of the show's decline in quality since its heyday, and his official statements imply that his departure is about having "the freedom to do other work." Other sources say his break with the show is mostly about the money. Each of the show's six voice actors are paid a flat rate per episode (about $300,000 in 2011, though that number may have changed since), but Shearer has been vocal about wanting a stake in all the show's current and future profits, including those from syndication deals and merchandising. Fox has never been willing to budge on the matter.

Last year, the entirety of The Simpsons' run began airing on FXX, an offshoot of an offshoot of the Fox network. Streaming rights to the series cost around $900 million, or about $1.5 million to $1.6 million an episode. It's easy to see why Shearer wants a cut of that, and the size and cultural impact of The Simpsons means that it will still be generating that kind of money for years after it ends (if it ever ends). That's certainly true for other '90s mega-sitcoms like Friends (which Netflix acquired for about $500,000 an episode) and Seinfeld (which Hulu got for about $700,000 per episode).