Fox's 'Family Guy,' 'King of the Hill' hit season highs

A couple of Fox's animated comedies returned to season-high ratings Sunday night while a pair of ABC dramas had their lowest numbers of the fall.

After covering baseball playoffs last week, Fox's comedy lineup was back to originals and posted relatively strong performances: "The Simpsons" (8.1 million, 3.8/10), "King of the Hill" (7.3 million, 3.5/8), "Family Guy" (9.1 million, 4.7/10) and "American Dad" (6.6 million, 3.3/7). "Hill" and "Family" both hit season-high numbers and placed second in their respective time periods. "Family" also featured this McCain-Palin slam that's sure to provoke some online discussion.

ABC won the night but endured across-the-board ratings declines. A modest "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition" (13 million, 3.3/8) led into season-low episodes of "Desperate Housewives" (15.2 million, 5.6/12) and "Brothers & Sisters" (10 million, 3.5/9). Nonetheless, "Housewives" was the highest-rated show of the night.

CBS managed to tie ABC in the preliminaries because of NFL overrun that makes its ratings more approximate than usual. Starting at 7:30 p.m.: "60 Minutes" (16.2 million, 4.3/12), "The Amazing Race" (11.2 million, 3.0/7), "Cold Case" (10.6 million, 2.7/6) and "The Unit" (8.6 million, 2.4/6).

NBC aired "Sunday Night Football," Seattle Seahawks at Tampa Bay Buccaneers (8.2 million, 3.2/8), down sharply from last week's game.

On the CW, the MRC block crashed (well, the ratings had already crashed; this is like the explosion after the crash). The block collectively dropped 25%-50% into a new "I Can't Believe It's on Broadcast" territory. All the shows received a 0.2/1 rating and averaged about 700,000 viewers.

Comments

[Television Spy]

Even high ratings aren't enough to save it, sadly they're giving the second longest running animated series the boot to make room for a spin-off of Family Guy, which is declining in ratings btw. The Cleaveland show, which hasn't even started yet was also picked up for a second season.