Fox has announced some massive renewals for their animated franchises The Simpsons, Family Guy and more, but there’s actually a secret catch in that they won’t be as long as previous seasons were. With The Simpsons Season 36 returning for new episodes this Spring and Family Guy now working its way through Season 23, the fate of these long running animated sitcoms was still in question heading into the rest of the year. That’s all changed in a significant way as Fox has announced a massive renewal for four of their key shows heading into the future of the Animation Domination block.
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Fox has officially announced that they have renewed The Simpsons, Family Guy, and Bob’s Burgers for four more seasons each. They have even confirmed that American Dad! has been saved from its end with TBS and has been picked up for four more seasons as well. But according to a report from Deadline that further details these renewals, there’s going to be a catch in that each of these new seasons are only going to be 15 episodes each. Which is a massive change for every single one of these franchises.
Longer Runs With Shorter Seasons
According to their report, each of these four season renewals will only be for 15 episodes each. That falls in line with the rest of Fox’s plans as they continue to shuffle around new seasons of other hits like Krapopolis and Basic Universal Guys, but it’s a huge change for each of these television mainstays. Although The Simpsons, Bob’s Burgers, Family Guy and American Dad! have had some shorter seasons in the past due to production shake ups (such as when American Dad! was in the midst of its initial Fox cancellation), this is going to be the first time many of them are capped off at just 15 episodes. So it’s going to be an adjustment for long time fans.
These shows had been accustomed to 22 episode long seasons, and were often broken up through the year. For example, The Simpsons just returned this Spring to start airing the second half of Season 36 that began last Fall. It previously aired 12 episodes before it wrapped up last year, so these new shorter seasons will wrap up their run in full before returning for a full next season in the following year. It’s going to be an adjustment for long time fans, but could end up being a better case for those working behind the scenes in the longterm.
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What Does This Mean for the Future?
This might be an adjustment from the way longtime fans have been watching each of these animated shows, but it will hopefully mean better health for each of them in the long run. Not only does this massive four season order mean that those behind the scenes of each of these shows will have guaranteed work for the foreseeable future (which is increasingly rare within the current animation landscape), but it also means that shows like Bob’s Burgers unfortunately won’t have to leave fans hanging with the still un-aired second halves of their respective seasons due to schedule shifts.
Both The Simpsons and Family Guy have also been expanding with exclusive streaming specials with Disney+ and Hulu respectively. It’s likely that this will continue in the future, so there will still be a chance that the eventual output for these shows will match up to what was seen (or expected) before. This is all conjecture, of course, but we’ll soon see how these new seasonal orders work out when they take effect in the near future.
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