Televisions' stellar comedy Family Guy has managed to weather an improbable amount of adversity, obstacles and outright failures and emerged stronger for it. After Family Guy was cancelled twice and battled against other iconic TV shows, creator Seth MacFarlane managed to seemingly do the impossible — produce a show that didn’t just keep coming back from the dead, but reincarnating it seemingly better each time.
MacFarlane first pitched the concept of Family Guy, voices and all, to the former Fox President of alternative programming, Mike Darnell. Apparently, he made quite the impression, as Darnell said, “I thought he was either crazy or a genius. Turns out he was a genius.” He gave MacFarlane about $40,000 to make a few minutes of his animated idea, and he came back with a pilot. Family Guy got the greenlight and would make a spectacular debut in early 1999 after Super Bowl XXXIII on Fox. But this giant kick-off to 22 million viewers would quickly end in disappointment — at least at first — before turning things around for good.
How It Started
MacFarlane landed the chance to pitch Fox on the idea of Family Guy on the strength of his Larry and Steve shorts on Cartoon Network’s World Premiere Toons in the late 1990s. It was based on a short animated film MacFarlane did at the Rhode Island School of Design called The Life of Larry. It was like he had been preparing his whole life for it, telling Barbara Walters he drew his first cartoon, Space Pirates, at age 7, calling it “terrible." But by age 9, he was writing a comic strip for the local paper for $5 a week. Fifteen years later, he would be one of the titans of Hollywood.
Fox Has a Change of Heart
By July of 2000, only months after getting axed, the network had a change of heart and ordered a short run of thirteen episodes for a third season. Because it takes almost a year to turn around the hand drawn episodes, Family Guy returned in late 2001 for Season 3. It ran Thursday nights against the dual juggernauts of Friends and Survivor. While audiences still loved Family Guy, there weren’t enough viewers, and by fall 2002, Family Guy was cancelled again.
Syndication and DVD's Save Family Guy. Again.
Fox then cut a deal with the Cartoon Network to air Family Guy in syndication and ratings took off, especially with key male demographics sought by advertisers. However, when DVD sales starting pouring in, that’s when the numbers became undeniable. Behind The Chappelle Show, the other two best DVD sellers were The Simpsons and Family Guy – both Fox animated products. Steve Feldstein, former Fox Home Entertainment executive, told the New York Times when it came to sales, “There was this fan base that was lying dormant. That base brought a whole new group with it” adding, ''[it] led the network to take a second look.'' Thus, history was made, and Family Guy became the first show revived from the dead in large part due to DVD sales and huge syndication numbers.
The two-time crash and burn of Family Guy, according to MacFarlane, may have actually been a good thing. In 2005, he told the media the breaks probably helped its creative team avoid burnout, noting animated shows don’t normally get a hiatus, which sometimes impacts quality on screen with “signs of a fatigued staff [whose] brains are just fried." But that hasn't plagued Family Guy, yet. It is now a well-oiled machine, preparing to crank out episodes for Seasons 20 and 21, while its giant profit stream still shows no signs of drying up.