Like Cougar Town before it, the critically-acclaimed but not-as-well-watched American Dad! is moving from a major broadcast network to the basic cable paradise of TBS. See America, this is why we have like five shows about hillbillies putting ketchup on their Kraft Dinner while shows like Parks and Recreation and Community have to basically beg for ratings. The A/V Club reports …
Though it started out as little more than a variation of Family Guy where Peter Griffin is lantern-jawed, archly conservative, and armed to the teeth (and Stewie is a goldfish for some reason), American Dad! has grown into one of the strongest links in Fox’s Animation Domination chain over the course of nine seasons. However, the animated series will defect from its broadcast homeland following the 2013-14 TV season, seeking the greater freedoms afforded by basic cable. American Dad! will join fellow network expatriate Cougar Town on TBS in the fall of 2014, exploring the cable outlet’s ostensibly looser standards for cartoon violence while speaking in exotic, previously taboo swears.
The part that kills me about all of this is that American Dad! is an objectively better written show with more sympathetic characters than its predecessor, Family Guy, yet can’t pull in the same ratings. Seriously, watch both shows side-by-side: American Dad! is a better-written, better-plotted show, the characters are funny but still relatable, and the weirder parts of the show are actually justified so it doesn’t feel like a cheap way to get a weird laugh. Family Guy is, well, not. The show doesn’t have the proper timing or the willingness to be vulnerable that American Dad! has, and it suffers from it. I guess what I’m trying to say is that I just wish Family Guy would take on some of the attributes that American Dad! has, instead of letting it go.