Fox has decided to end the run of King of the Hill after this season’s thirteen episodes are up and won’t renew it, according to the Hollywood Reporter (tip o’ the hat to Andrea for the link):
After several previous brushes with cancellation, the network has opted not to renew the series beyond its current 13th season.
In April, Fox picked up 13 more episodes from the 20th Century Fox TV-produced show, which are wrapping production.
A lot has changed since “King of the Hill” premiered in 1997. Its creators Greg Daniels and Mike Judge have moved on to other projects — Daniels developed and is running NBC’s “The Office,” and Judge has a new animated series, “The Goode Family,” launching on ABC in midseason.
Our Renew or Cancel Index can’t predict all circumstances and this was one of them. While Hill was getting long in tooth, from an 18-49 demographic perspective it was outperforming other Fox shows — even shows the Index predicts would be renewed like Bones and American Dad. It’s been a busy day for Fox which earlier in the day announced it was pulling ‘Til Death from its schedule. The Index did predict that move.
I’m not surprised at all. It had a great run, but the last thing that Fox needs is more animated shows. Not that Futurama’s not great.
OMG, you cannot be serious!
This is the most underrated animated Comedy.
In my opinion, it is the second best animated comedy on the airwaves behind American Dad.
Im totally gutted.
Hopefully we dont hear anything similar for American Dad.
FOX is throwing a monkey wrench into the renew/cancel index.
This was expected by Judge and Co. before this season.
In regards to my previous comment.
American Dad will be renewed for a fifth season. yay!
Where did it say American Dad would be renewed? I’m now expecting FOX to move Family Guy to 8:30 and add a new hour-long program at 9:00.
Hmm. Christ Almighty. I forgot about the Cleveland spinoff from Family Guy. Wow. Guess FOX wanted to make room for it by killing off one of their greatest properties and promoting a 90 minute Seth animation block. EW. Whatever, they’ll have egg on their face if Cleveland underperforms, but Family Guy fans are so sheepish that airing Cleveland right after The Simpsons could work out very well.
Glad it seems like Mike Judge and Co. new about the ensuing ending. The only thing I would really like to see is Dale finding out the truth about John Redcorn. Going out with a good episode would be fine by my books, and the same for The Simpsons when that time comes. Neither of these series have many ongoing storylines that need to be resolved.
Fox won’t move Family Guy to 8:30, Family Guy is has too many profanities (the FCC would have to sensor all the good jokes). I think King of the Hill will be replace by another Family Guy spin-off: The Cleveland Show… which looks okay. The show debutes in Januray: wonder whether FOX feels another Family Guy spin-off with the heart of the simpsons (from the look of it) would be a good way to lead from the Simpsons and Family; plus gain ratings. Maybe not thought.
It looks like I’m in the minority to say “Its about time.” This show was living on the brink of getting canned for the last five years and was really just living off the strength of the other Sunday Night Animated Shows. On top of that, the unchanging premise had gotten old years ago. Hank Hill is a traditional type of Southern guy who finds himself in outrageous situations that he is uncomfortable with, etc, etc.
True
Sounds like the creators and writers got bored of it aswell; King Of the Hill was splitting apart before this even happened.
Mike Judge needs to bring back BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD now that he is done with this. That would, like, totally rule! Show them grown up with wives and kids.
The show has gone creatively limp. I wonder how much of this is talent wanting to move on as well. Still, the ratings have been quite good this year, and this is a risky move by Fox when so much of their schedule is so weak. Animation Domination is strong, but Family Guy could play any time and any night. Might behoove Fox to finally shore up Thursday, most lucrative ad night of the week. Take Cleveland, AD, and the Hurwitz show and make Thursday an animation night. Move House to Sun 9. Fringe stays strong leading out of AI. Bones to Monday during AI season, leading into 24.
IDK, I like Family Guy’s chances a lot better on Thursday than Fringe or even House, and one of those two has to be moving over come January (unless Fox decides to just burn off PB and T:SCC.)
King of the Hill was & is a show that the family can watch. I think it holds the record for the most seasons without changing their opening theme. i.e. same screen shots and song.
I’ve always been surprised this show got the ratings it did. I’ve never had much of an interest in FOX’s animated shows except for the Simpsons, and even that show I stopped watching years ago.
Interesting move though. Really makes me wonder what Kevin Reilly has planned for the spring schedule.
This really stinks, King of the Hill was really quite unique among the animated shows for being more like a sitcom type grounded show instead of an endless string of manatee jokes. I really liked the variety offered by FG, Simpsons, and KotH together. I’d much rather see American Dad cancelled. I hope cleveland bombs now…
King Of the Hill i think was cancelled because it had been around for too long and FOX wanted to brighten up Sunday with some new shows. But this could be bad news for American Dad aswell.
DAMN I LOVE THIS SHOW! I wonder if one of the last episodes will be Dale finding out Joseph is really John Redcorn’s son.
King of the Hill started as a ten minute demonstration tape that was the funniest pilot/demo I have ever seen, bar none.
Honestly, I never thought the show was as good as I thought it could be. It was good for a long time and it was smart and subtle, but at one time I really thought it would become the best TV comedy of its era. It never quite was.
It’s time to let it go and give it a proper send-off.
And, at the very least, they will have the opportunity to give it a proper send off. Not my favorite show, but it did have a great run.
Quite surprising given its ratings resurgence in the demo this year. I religiously watch both “The Simpsons” and “King of the Hill” every week, and I believe “King of the Hill” is the one that is most consistently fresh and clever. But I certainly can’t complain about a remarkable 13 season run.
Truthfully, FOX doesn’t interest me any more. They had a remarkably creative run with a lot of good & great shows for nearly twenty years and now they’re CBS lite and offering up nothing new. Arrested Development, in my opinion, was the greatest show ever created and was the final gasp of FOX going with edgier choices for their schedule. Now, the only thing I’ll be watching is an irreverent, subversive animated series that will be celebrating its 20th birthday next September. Heh, and funny enough, it’s the one that really got things started for the network (along with Married With Children around the same time and X-Files a few years later).
* December, not September.
the cancellation obviously has nothing to did with the ratings, personally I think the show is just getting really tired and they want to quit before quality suffers too much.
Note that TVGUIDE is reporting that FOX still has quite a backlog of “King of the Hill” episodes and has not even begun airing the 13 episodes that they ordered back in April 2008 after the writers strike ended. TVGUIDE implied the show could continue to air until December 2009 before they run out of episodes, depending on how FOX decides to schedule Sunday night and whether they will sprinkle in short runs of new offerings in the King of the Hill time slot.
This is the 3rd show cancelled from FOX
I am not a Family Guy fan but its better off on Sunday nights. If FOX kept it their in the first place, it would have ran consectively without cancelation. The fans really kept it alive.
King of the Hill was such a fun show. Some episodes seemed a little lackluster that couple of years though. I always wanted them to age the characters because I wanted to see Bobby in high school.
I’m not surprised, but they should end American Dad as well. Family Guy and Simpsons are still good enough, but they should change the schedule a bit: Move Terminator: TSCC to Sunday 9pm, right after Family guy. There, the show has a good lead-in with FG airing at 8:30 and may get better ratings. As a huge Simpsons fan, this is a bit of a warning towards Ameican Dad AND The Simpsons. Sore, The Simpsons do ok now, but remember what happened last season: The Simpsons pulled in 6 million viewers towards the end of the season, way less than KOTH does now.
I was getting tired of king of the hill i’m sure it’ll have a fairly long run in syndication but so what i’m sure fox will be able to replace it quite effectively
Personally, I thought King of the Hill was one of the best Fox animation shows. It was funny without being raunchy, insulting, or disgusting. I’ve really enjoyed most, if not all, of the episodes. I’m sorry to see it cancelled.
I will miss this show, but hnostly, it was my least favorite fox animated show.
I love this show, glad I have the dvd’s. Wondering if Dale will find out about Nancy.