'Family Guy' Makes Unexpected Return To Adult Swim Next Month
Before the long-running series returns to FOX with new episodes, it returns to an old home with episodes it never got to air
Congratulations “Stewie is Enceinte”, you are no longer the last episode of Family Guy to air on Adult Swim. More than three years after its momentous but anticipated departure, the Seth MacFarlane-created Fox animated series returns starting New Year’s Day.
Rather famously, it was Adult Swim picking up the reruns of what was then just 49 aired episodes and the skipped/banned “Wish Upon a Weinstein” that helped bring Family Guy the audience it needed to warrant a revival that has since made it immortal. January 1 will kick off a three-day marathon airing from 7 PM ET/PT to 5 AM, leaving only the last hour of the block to not have Family Guy air. It will then assume a weeknight timeslot of 10:00 – 11:30pm ET/PT thereafter. Library episodes are mentioned, but it’s unclear what range that entails. The deal is non-exclusive, which makes sense since the show just joined Comedy Central’s lineup on Labor Day, which will be just four months prior when New Year’s Day hits and it would’ve certainly looked bad to even entertain exiting such.
The range question (if it really should be) comes in because when FX Networks first secured Family Guy reruns (and Bob’s Burgers for that matter) in April 2019 for FXX and Freeform, it froze Adult Swim’s episode supply at the first 15 seasons for the final 2+ years it originally had reruns. FXX had season 16 (from the 2017-18 season) and onward until September 18, 2021 when Family Guy left Adult Swim (and TBS) and became the primetime slot holder on FXX with all seasons at its disposal and became exclusive to it and Freeform with several forms of dabbling on FX. It is unclear if Family Guy will be returning to Freeform, as we are in the midst of the 25 Days of Christmas stunt, which followed 30 Days of Disney and 31 Nights of Halloween, so it hasn’t been on a regular syndication schedule there since September. Should it be the full library, this will mean 134 episodes will be making their Adult Swim debut. Acquiring the then-five recent seasons of Bob’s Burgers made for 110 episodes of catchup, and getting back Futurama reruns at the end of 2021 got them the 68 cable episodes that were destined to no longer be everything in a manner of months. They’ve not been airing it much lately though.
Kian, who runs the CNSchedules Twitter account, considers this new deal an indictment of the decaying cable industry. April 2019 was 7 months before Disney+, a year before Peacock and (HBO) Max, and two before Paramount+. Adult Swim and FXX restructured their Bob’s Burgers arrangement for both parties to get the full series just as FXX and Freeform dropped from Spectrum lineups, dramatically reducing the number of households that carry them. It’s possible and believed that while Family Guy was too expensive to keep back then, the licensing cost had deflated considerably to make it manageable in 2024/2025.
"Adult Swim is a huge part of Family Guy's early history, and we're excited for the series to return to our lineup in 2025," said Michael Ouweleen, the president of Adult Swim. "Having Family Guy back on our air is a great complement to the amazing slate of animated originals we also have planned for next year."
Sources: Press release via The Futon Critic, Deadline, CNSchedules