King of the Hill has been on a wild, hot streak as of late. Thanks to the arrival of its fourteenth season on Hulu, the older iterations of Hank, Peggy, and Bobby Hill saw serious success. Following the streaming service’s announcement that Arlen’s comeback would not only return for a fifteenth season, but a sixteenth and seventeenth as well, the original series is still going strong with reruns on Cartoon Network’s Adult Swim. Unfortunately, a recent scheduling announcement for the beloved programming block has many believing that King of the Hill’s time on Adult Swim might be coming to an end.
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So, why is there reason to believe that King of the Hill might be departing Cartoon Network? Specifically, the programming block is planning to air a staggering ninety-two episodes from November 10th to the 21st. On its face, this wouldn’t be cause for concern. Unfortunately, when looking at Cartoon Network’s schedule for the following days, King of the Hill disappears from the rotation, with Adult Swim instead leaning much more into blocks of Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy, Rick And Morty, and more. While nothing has been confirmed, the rejuvenation of the series on Hulu could potentially mean that Disney would want more money to run the animated show in syndication, something that Cartoon Network might not be willing to pull the trigger on. This also wouldn’t be the first time that King of the Hill left the cable network.
King of the Hill And Adult Swim’s Wild Ride
King of the Hill originally began airing reruns on Adult Swim on January 1st, 2009, helping to give the Fox animated series more eyeballs. The series would eventually leave Cartoon Network for Comedy Central, with the latter also airing the Hill family adventures for years. In 2021, Adult Swim once again gained the syndication rights and has been airing the show ever since. This track record goes to show that King of the Hill isn’t necessarily a mainstay on the cable network’s programming block, effectively meaning that there could be reason to believe that it might be departing once again. As of the writing of this article, it has yet to be confirmed if the Hills are leaving Cartoon Network, but if they do, we have to imagine there will be some networks chomping at the bit for the syndication rights.
During a past interview, Toonami co-creator Jason DeMarco discussed the difficulties that the Cartoon Network programming block faced when it came to acquiring anime series. This line of thought could also apply to King of the Hill so it might be worth revisiting. DeMarco stated, “Toonami isn’t necessarily offering as much money as Netflix or whoever, so ‘we’re not going to give you as much money and we want more control over your clips. Sound good??’ From that perspective, it makes it harder to make deals with more protective owners, but honestly, that’s good for them. They understand the value of what they’re making and their value in the global marketplace.”
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