History of Family Guy

Family Guy's first and second seasons were made starting in 1999 after Larry shorts (its predecessor) caught the attention of the Fox Broadcasting Company. Its cancellation was announced, but then a shift in power at Fox and outcry from the fans led to a reversal of that decision and the making of a third season. After that, it was really cancelled.

Reruns on Adult Swim drove interest in the show up, and the DVD releases did quite well, selling over 2.2 million in a year and renewing network interest. Family Guy returned to production in 2004, completing two more seasons (for a total of five), renewing the show for at least two more seasons, and a straight to DVD movie, Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story.

Creation

Main article: Larry shorts

Family Guy originally aired in the United States on the Fox Broadcasting Company on January 31, 1999, after Super Bowl XXXIII.

This episode attracted 22 million viewers. The show premiered as a regular series in April and ran for six additional episodes until the season finale in mid-May. The first season had seven episodes which introduced the show's main characters. The second season began on September 23, 1999, and suffered competition from other shows. After only two episodes of the second season, Family Guy was taken off the network's permanent schedule and shown irregularly thereafter. The show returned in March 2000 to finish airing the second season which contained 21 episodes. The third season contained 22 episodes and began its run on July 11, 2001.

During its second and third-season runs, Fox frequently moved the show around different days and time slots with little or no notice and consequently, the show's ratings suffered. When Family Guy was shown in the UK, and when the DVDs were subsequently released there (November 12, 2001), the first seven episodes of the second season were included with the first season, balancing them out with 14 episodes each.

There was a great deal of debate and rumor during the second and third seasons about whether Family Guy would be cancelled or renewed. Fox publicly announced that the show had been cancelled at the end of the second season. In an attempt to convince Fox to renew the show, dismayed fans created websites, signed petitions, and wrote letters; some even sent actual diapers and baby food to the network to save Stewie.

A shift in power at Fox resulted in the ordering of thirteen new episodes forming the basis of the third season. Keenly aware of the uncertainty of the show's future, the writers referenced the uncertainty in several episodes, specifically The Thin White Line, where Fox let them say the word "fuck" for the first time without being hidden by background noise like a bell. It was bleeped, of course.

During the third season, Fox announced that Family Guy was cancelled for good.

Revival efforts

The show's cancellation in the third season was decried by fans, who renewed efforts to convince Fox to resurrect the show. An online petition was launched, garnering over 10,000 signatures within a few weeks. The petition gained over 100,000 signatures total, but this along with mass e-mailing and letter writing to Fox executives and organized street protests failed to save Family Guy. Later efforts to get other networks, particularly UPN, to buy Family Guy also failed.

Return to television

In 2003, Family Guy gained its first syndicated run on Canada's Teletoon network, where it quickly gained massive popularity due to frequent airings. Several months later, reruns of the series finally found a permanent home at Cartoon Network's late-night Adult Swim block, where it continues to play as of 2007. According to a Cartoon Network press release,

FAMILY GUY ranks #1 in its time period on cable among Adults and Men 18–24, and occasionally beats both The Late Show with David Letterman and The Tonight Show with Jay Leno in head-to-head competition among Men 18–34 and Men 18–24.

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The series found further success on DVD, when it was finally released for the US market (NTSC, Region 1) on April 15, 2003. Divided into two volumes, Family Guy sold 2.2 million DVD units in the first year, reportedly surpassing every other TV-based DVD released in 2003, including Sex and the City and Friends compilations. The significant Cartoon Network ratings combined with the unprecedented DVD sales, led to widespread rumors that Fox was in talks to revive the series.

On November 19, 2003, the E! Entertainment Television channel and its website (see below) reported that Fox was negotiating with Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane to revive the show with 35 new episodes. In a February 27, 2004 interview with IGN, Seth MacFarlane confirmed that Family Guy would resume production. MacFarlane provided even more information in a BBC interview.

On March 26, 2004, Fox Broadcasting Company officially announced that it had committed to producing at least 22 more episodes of Family Guy for broadcast in early 2005. Adult Swim retained a window to run these episodes, starting on May 1, 2005. Seth MacFarlane was quoted as saying,

I'm just incredibly excited that we're back in business on Family Guy. Now all those crazy kids who've been hounding me to bring the show back can stop bothering me and move onto more serious matters—like saving Coupling.

The fourth-season premiere of Family Guy aired on Sunday, May 1, 2005, 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Fox, and poked fun at the show's former troubles by showing a 2002 flashback with Peter listing all of the Fox shows that would have to fail (and did) before Family Guy would be able to return. An important reason for the show's current success is the Sunday night time slot along with other Fox animated programs. Reruns of the fourth season began play during Adult Swim on June 9, 2005

A Family Guy direct-to-DVD movie titled Family Guy Presents Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story, which combined three Family Guy episodes into one coherent story (with added scenes) was released on September 27, 2005. The 88-minute film is unrated in the US (in the UK it's rated with a 15 certificate) and includes commentary, deleted material, and other bonus features. An edited version of the film was shown as the Season 4 finale on May 21, 2006. The film's plot concerns Stewie finding out what he is like in the future. Originally, the movie was going to be made before the TV episodes, but the film got pushed back when the ideas within the episodes took off. On the same day of the DVD movie's release, Variety reported that 20th Century Fox greenlit production of 22 additional all new episodes of Family Guy, which began airing on FOX on September 10, 2006.

A Family Guy video game was produced under the 2K Games banner, and was developed by High Voltage Software. Playable characters include Peter, Brian and Stewie. The game was released on October 25, 2006 on the PlayStation Portable, Xbox and PlayStation 2. The video game is rated M for Mature and is rated 15 in the UK.

Production on Season 6 (2007-2008) has started up in January after a two month hiatus.

Copyright lawsuit

On March 15, 2007, lawyers for entertainer Carol Burnett filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles claiming that Burnett's likeness and theme was willfully misappropriated in the episode "Peterotica". The opening of the episode has Peter, Quagmire, Joe Swanson and Cleveland entering an adult bookstore and remarking on its cleanliness. They learn that the reason is that Burnett has been hired as a part-time janitor. The scene then cuts to a cartoon of Burnett in the guise of her "Charwoman" character mopping near a pile of inflatable dolls, while an altered arrangement of her signature tune plays. The characters then discuss her habit of tugging her ear at the end of every episode, leading into another joke. The suit alleges that the jokes in the episode were in response to Burnett's production company denying Seth MacFarlane permission to use the tune in an episode. The suit was dismissed.

Live performances

Seth McFarlane and some of the other writers and voice actors on the show have begun to perform enormously successful, "Family Guy LIVE!" theater shows. The show usually begins with a read-through of a script from a classic episode from the series, with all of the original voice-actors performing their character's lines, and then moves onto a performance of some songs from the show's history. Towards the end, there is a Q & A session and a clip is shown from one of the new, unaired episodes. There have been performances in New York, Los Angeles, Montreal, and Chicago. Even though an aired episode is usually only 22 minutes long, the script-reading of an episode of the same length can last as long as an hour with all of the pauses for laughter to subside and constant asides to the audience.