American Dad Star Seemingly Hints At Show Renewal

There’s some confusion here on season numbers that I’d like to clear up for American Dad. 

Exactly 20 years ago from this passed Feb 5th, American Dad aired only seven episodes of the show’s first season starting with the post-Super Bowl premiere. When the show returned the following fall after the summer break, FOX announced this as the show’s second season although really the production codes will tell you that the majority of season two was in fact a bunch of episodes produced for the show’s first season. These production codes used to start with numbers and did so from 1-9.

Then when the transfer of American Dad went from FOX to TBS during the show’s 11th season, it was noted that FOX had premiered three episodes because at the time FOX was very big on big guest stars on AniDom Sunday Nights to drive viewers one of which was Kim Kardashian whom was the hottest thing in television at the time and was featured (Jane Krakowski and Paul Reubens were also in various episodes for this short run) on the network’s final aired episode of American Dad. TBS would take over American Dad and would announce the show as the 12th season which started only a month after the season 11 finale premiered on FOX with the idea that the network was going to build out their own Animation Domination-like lineup with American Dad being the heavy and series like Tarantula, Close Enough, The COPS, and Final Space surrounding the show in hopes of bringing younger viewers to TBS. Unfortunately, that animation lineup never really happened as Tarantula took a while to premiere what was ultimately a burial during that year’s Christmas break, Close Enough was in production hell for a long-time, and Final Space would move from TBS to Adult Swim where it would ultimately be canceled after also being buried in the network’s lineup.

So, if you’re keeping track at home, the show’s production codes (which now start with letters, not numbers) have the series technically on it’s 19th production season but it’s also the show’s 21st aired season. Similarly, Futurama has went through the same deal as the show went from FOX to Comedy Central with four movies, new episodes, another cancellation, and an eventual return on Hulu where it’s now kicking ass. That’s why when you go to stream American Dad season 19 on Hulu it’s different than when Wikipedia has the episodes organized the way they have it.

So, when Jeff Fischer posted a pic a few weeks ago that he was reading a script for American Dad’s 19th season, it should be noted that Jeff is typically a season behind when he counts the episodes because a lot of the cast prefers to say that season 11 was all one big season with episodes from both TBS and FOX having aired in the same year. So, for the rest of the world, Jeff is most likely reading a script for a new episode of American Dad season 20 which lines up with the WGA website that seems to hint that not only are new episodes of American Dad on the way potentially later this year, but even into 2026.

With this season of American Dad winding down over the next several weeks on TBS, it’s still unknown where these episodes would potentially debut. Rumor has it that TBS tried canceling American Dad a couple of years ago during the whole mess with the AT&T split but cable networks overruled them noting that it was the only original series on TBS and with that network being carried on every basic cable package in the country that if the network wanted to keep that spot (and the revenue that comes with it) they’d have to keep American Dad otherwise they would end up on the increasingly unprofitable second and third tier cable programming packages. Since then, TBS hasn’t really added that much to it’s lineup (in fact they just canceled Wipeout just a few weeks ago) but that they were developing a new animated series called Hellicious. There have also been rumors of WB Discovery spinning off it’s entire cable business into a separate company from the streaming businesses thereby allowing the networks to have more wiggle room for concentrating on branding and stocking their own schedules how they see fit much in the same way NBC Universal is doing with SpinCo.

In any event, it sounds like there’s new American Dad on the way, hopefully as we get closer to the season finale in the next few weeks things start to get more clear. In the meantime, a new episode of American Dad drops tonight @ 10 pm ET/PT, only on TBS, check your local listings.