‘Family Guy’ Bounces Back Big for FOX
LOS ANGELES (Zap2it.com) “Family Guy” fans put their eyeballs where their DVD money had previously been and turned out in droves to watch the show’s return.
The animated series, returning to FOX more than three years after the network last aired an original episode, gathered some of the best ratings in its history Sunday (May 1). About 11.85 million people watched the fourth-season premiere, according to fast national ratings from Nielsen, and a huge number of them fell in the young-adult demographics FOX loves. (Final ratings will be out Tuesday.)
Sunday was a pretty good night in general for the broadcast networks. ABC’s “Desperate Housewives” and “Grey’s Anatomy” each drew their second-biggest audiences of the season, and the CBS movie “Riding the Bus with My Sister” also performed well.
It was “Family Guy,” though, that provided the most eye-catching numbers of the night. The show scored a strong 5.7 rating among adults 18-49 — second to “Housewives” and more than double FOX’s season average (2.5) for the half-hour. It even beat the ABC hit among two of the demographics that helped resurrect “Family Guy,” teenagers and men 18-34.
All this for a show that averaged fewer than 5 million viewers per week in its most recent season on FOX, 2001-02. Strong ratings for repeats on Cartoon Network and DVD sales helped convince FOX to put the series back into production.
The network’s other animated offerings posted decent numbers as well. “The Simpsons” celebrated its 350th episode (although some counts have the show at 351) with two episodes that averaged just over 11.1 million viewers, and “American Dad” held onto about 80 percent of the “Family Guy” audience. Like its lead-in, “Dad” also improved substantially on the network’s season average for the time period.
For all the good news at FOX, though, ABC still dominated the first Sunday of sweeps. Nearly 25.9 million people watched “Desperate Housewives,” the second-largest audience of the season for the show. Its 11.4 rating among adults 18-49 was also its second-best performance. “Grey’s Anatomy” (18.5 million viewers, 8.5 18-49 rating) had its second-largest audience and best-yet rating in the 18-49 demographic.
At CBS, “Riding the Bus with My Sister” brought in 15 million viewers, an improvement of close to 4 million over the network’s season average for its Sunday movie.
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