How ‘Family Guy’ went from being cancelled to more than 25 seasons and found new life in the streaming era

Family Guy premiered last century. It was January 1999, the same year The Sopranos began. But unlike The Sopranos — and much like Mariska Hargitay in Law & Order: Special Victims Unit — the Griffins have kept appearing on TV screens around the world almost without interruption ever since. The series has not only survived a cancellation; it has outlasted every ailment of traditional television and thrived in the streaming era.

So much so that its famous creator — and the voice behind several characters — Seth MacFarlane, was honored at the end of 2025 with Nielsen’s Icon of Streaming award, after his shows surpassed 60 billion minutes of viewing on U.S. platforms in a single year, or, as the company translates it, the equivalent of 116,000 years of watch time.

Viewers can binge endlessly: Family Guy has aired more than 450 episodes, and MacFarlane has launched projects as varied as American Dad!, the spinoff The Cleveland Show, the comedy Ted, the sci‑fi saga The Orville, the documentary series Cosmos, and several films. To keep expanding this remarkably durable brand, MacFarlane is preparing another spinoff featuring baby Stewie Griffin traveling through space and time, Rick and Morty‑style.

“Itʼs a high honor to receive the first prize in show business that isnʼt determined by quality,” joked MacFarlane, who began as an animator on Cow and Chicken and Dexter’s Laboratory.

Despite the constant focus on The Simpsons and its influence as the longest‑running primetime series in U.S. history, the record‑breaking numbers and cultural staying power of adult animated shows make it impossible to overlook the unexpected phenomenon of Family Guy — especially considering it was cancelled in 2002 due to low ratings. At the time, critics dismissed it as a mere attempt to replicate the success of The Simpsons for a generation craving edgier, more abrasive humor. The animation itself wasn’t groundbreaking or original, but the show dared to use a rapid‑fire structure of flashback cutaways and joke‑after‑joke. That style went on to influence the humor of other comedies, including one created by Matt Groening.

The series could deliver wild, sexual, drug‑related, violent or sharply critical jokes in ways no other broadcast show was allowed to (South Park aired on cable). Yet despite premiering after the Super Bowl with 22 million viewers, its future looked short‑lived.

The throne at Fox still belonged to Springfield, and going up against Frasier, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, Survivor and Friends killed it before its time. Fortunately, its cancellation led to reruns being sold to the cable network Adult Swim, where it became the channel’s most‑watched show. That success — along with excellent DVD sales — pushed Fox to approve a fourth season three years later. It was an unprecedented move for a network that reversed course and brought back a show it had once written off. That same year, Fox doubled down by green‑lighting American Dad!, centered on another dysfunctional family with a CIA‑agent father, a Russian goldfish, and an alien.

After that rough patch, Family Guy achieved a milestone in 2009: it became the first animated series in 50 years (since The Flintstones) to be nominated for the Emmy for Best Comedy.

More than two decades later, Family Guy is as relevant as ever: its jokes are perfect for viral clips on social media, and fans rewatch its episodes to the point of making it one of the most‑viewed titles on Disney+. The show, now owned by Disney after its purchase of 20th Century Fox, was the second most‑watched adult animated series across all streaming platforms in 2025 (the first was Bob’s Burgers, also born in the shadow of The Simpsons and MacFarlane).

The third was… American Dad!, which has now surpassed 400 episodes and shares its co‑creator, executive producer and voice actor. And all this despite Fox deciding to cancel American Dad! in 2024, after which it moved to the cable network TBS. Not content with repeating the same mistake this season, the network has backtracked and brought it back to Fox — although MacFarlane admitted on the podcast The Town that he now only visits the studio to record voices and toss out a few jokes. Family Guy was also the most‑watched series among adults aged 18 to 32, many of whom weren’t even born when it premiered.

“I don’t see a good reason to stop,” MacFarlane said in a 2024 interview with the Los Angeles Times. “People still love it. It makes people happy and it funds some good causes. It’s a lot of extraneous cash that you can donate to Rainforest Trust and you can still go out to dinner that night.”

Yet, despite iconic highs and lows — like the death of the dog Brian Griffin (brought back two episodes later) or the episodes in which he recreated the original Star Wars trilogy — the creator also admitted he didn’t always feel that way. “There was a time when I thought, it’s time to wrap it up,” he said. “At this point, we’ve reached escape velocity. I don’t know that there’s any reason to stop at this point unless people get sick of it. Unless the numbers show that people just are ‘Eh, we don’t care about Family Guy anymore.’”

In fact, the universe will expand in 2027 with Stewie, after The Cleveland Show also ran for four seasons (the Griffins’ African-American neighbor has already returned to Quahog).

MacFarlane’s position gives him privileges no one else would get. As one of Disney’s golden boys, he has landed dream assignments such as reviving Carl Sagan’s Cosmos, producing a documentary about the science communicator for National Geographic, and building his own space adventure in The Orville, an expensive science‑fiction series that let him capture the more metaphorical and optimistic side of Star Trek while mixing in, almost literally, the franchise’s tropes — ships and aliens — with his own humor.

MacFarlane — who has hosted the Oscars, produced the latest Naked Gun film, and released symphonic albums as a crooner (he has five Grammy nominations) — has also tasted box‑office success with the Ted movies. He continues to mine that parody of the perfect 1990s sitcom family — with its unfiltered, scatological, dark humor — in the show’s TV adaptation. The irreverent character has just premiered its second season on SkyShowtime, though a renewal seems unlikely given the cost of having a fully digital protagonist in every scene.

“It’s like you’re doing an Avengers movie every 22 minutes with the amount of CGI that it takes, not only to animate the bear, but to act the bear,” MacFarlane said of the character he also voices. A cheaper animated version is already in the works.

What explains Family Guy’s remarkable staying power? MacFarlane summed up his view in a 2024 interview with The Wrap: “The goal of the show is just to make people laugh […] It delves into social allegory and politics now and then [...] but that’s always secondary. It’s a room full of comedy writers who just want to fucking laugh.”

His simple recipe has worked. Family Guy and American Dad!, along with The Simpsons and Bob’s Burgers, are renewed through 2029.

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition