American Dad! End At TBS Marks A New Era

Fans of American Dad! can rest easy as the show’s cancelation at TBS won’t be the end for the Seth McFarlane-led animated favorite, but it does spell the end of an era at the network it’s leaving in line with Warner Bros Discovery’s master plan.

American Dad! has been entertaining fans since it premiered in 2005 on Fox, coming from Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane just a few years after the latter show became a big success. Unlike Family Guy and its Cleveland-focused spinoff, American Dad! had a more distinct approach to comedy that relied a lot less on cutaway gags in favor of more character-driven humor. By taking its central cast—each more unique and crazy than the last—through often relatively relatable situations, the show draws laughs in a very different way from its predecessor and sets itself apart. Over time, American Dad! would see a lot of success in its own right and feature so many guest stars that fans can’t keep track of them all, all to the delight of fans.

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American Dad! would eventually leave Fox for TBS in 2014, where the show would give the network another decade of great content and earn renewal through seasons 18 and 19 in 2023. While the show wouldn’t be renewed at TBS, fans can rest easy about the show’s future. As confirmed by Variety, American Dad! will be making a grand return to Fox for more seasons. As per the report, 20th Television Animation and Fox Entertainment are closing in on a deal to bring the show back into the fold, with expectations pointing to a multiple-season order for the show. While that’s a relief for fans, the reasoning behind the show’s initial cancelation marks the conclusion of a WBD mandate.

Following the merger that created WBD, new overlord David Zaslav would go on a tear across the new entity’s holdings in the name of cost-cutting, as mandated by the business interests behind the company’s new paradigm. This would see the company make a lot of irksome decisions regarding canceling projects and weather numerous flops from the dissipating DCEU, all of which were very widely discussed. Less well-known was the company’s decision to kill original scripted programming across TruTV, TNT, and TBS, a move that saw development on that content come to an immediate halt. Ever since, the shows that existed prior to that decision have been dying out across the content platforms, and American Dad! marks the very last one on TBS finally making an exit. The move was initially pitched in 2022 as a surefire way to save at least $3 billion in expenditure, but it’s unclear how that’s worked out for the company.

Regardless of what the reasoning is, the only clear winners here are Fox and longtime viewers of the series. American Dad! is easily MacFarlane’s best show, and both fans and Fox’s bottom line will be glad to see the series return to the network now that it’s leaving TBS for good. Only time will tell if WBD’s decision to cut the show and all like it on TBS and other content channels will pay off for the company, but it’s clear that it would be a much-needed and surprising break from ineffective decisions.

American Dad! is currently available to stream on Hulu.

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Source: Variety