In hindsight, given Chris's reputation, they made the right choice. I think what really made The Simpsons special was that, other than Nancy Cartwright (and eventually Russi Taylor and Tress MacNeil), they didn't use traditional voice actors and actresses for main series characters. Futurama clearly went a different route with Billy West, Phil LaMarr, John DiMaggio, (who I swear this was his breakthrough role) Maurice LaMarche, and Lauren Tom...etc. But The Simpsons using cast members from the Tracy Ulman show gave the cartoon a nice sound that was different from anything else at the time (minus Nancy, who was in everything back then). And as a result, some of them even became voice actors outside of the Simpsons (Dan especially).What's interesting is Mr. Burns was originally voiced by Chris Latta (who played Starscream on Transformers and Cobra Commander on GI Joe). And you know, when I started watching Transformers in recent years, I couldn't help but notice every time Starscream or Megatron said, "Excellent..." in a scene together, lol.
Considering they killed off Starscream and Cobra just to stick it to Chris, I'd hate to think staples like Mr. Burns and Moe would have been wiped off the show, even though it's likely they'd've been recast. Moe and Burns are two of my favorites.