The day Adult Swim executives have been dreading is about to hit. Fox Animation’s Family Guy, once upon a time the #1 reason anyone tuned into AS, is leaving the schedule. The rights are no longer available, as new mama The Walt Disney Company wants to hoard the series for its own gain, i.e. streaming on Hulu and marathons on FXX.
Ever since Disney swallowed Fox AS has been anticipating this move, and has had years to prepare. Within that time they’ve ramped up production on original content, granting a 70-episode deal to its current #1 attraction (Rick & Morty), rescuing cult shows from other outlets (Tuca & Bertie), and increased the amount of new shows (the latest, Teenage Euthanasia, premieres the night Family Guy leaves). Robot Chicken will be airing an entire week of new episodes for the first five days AS is Griffin-less.
What does that schedule look like, anyway? AS viewers have been pondering this question for months, as the channel is well-known for stuffing Family Guy into every empty hour it can. Thanks to the Twitter account CN News/Schedules, we now know:
Adult Swim schedule for Monday 9/20:
8:00 – Joe Pera Talks With You (!!)
9:00 – Bob's Burgers
10:00 – American Dad
11:30 – Rick and Morty
12:00 – Robot Chicken (new)
12:15 – Robot Chicken
12:30 – Aqua TV Show Show
1:00 – The Venture Bros.— CN News/Schedules (@CNschedules) September 6, 2021
1:30 – Bob's Burgers (repeat)
2:30 – Rick and Morty (repeat)
3:00 – Aqua TV Show Show (repeat)
3:30 – The Venture Bros. (repeat)
4:00 – Tender Touches
4:30 – Robot Chicken (repeat)
5:00 – Naruto Shippuden
5:30 – Samurai Jack— CN News/Schedules (@CNschedules) September 6, 2021
Leading with Joe Pera is quite the wild card, and there aren’t enough episodes to strip it weekly in that spot. It’s likely something else will appear there very soon. We’ll keep watching for the next few weeks and see what they do. As this other tweet points out, the very first AS promo for Family Guy is now deeply ironic…
According to Zap2it, Family Guy's final night on @adultswim will be Saturday, September 18th! The schedule is as follows:
10:00 Family Guy: Quagmire's Mom
10:30 Family Guy: Encyclopedia Griffin
11:00 Family Guy: Stewie Is Enceinte pic.twitter.com/kXbq5O5T7V— [swimpedia] (@swimpedia) September 5, 2021
It’s the breakup of a long and fruitful partnership. It’s likely Family Guy would have never come back from cancellation if Adult Swim hadn’t started running it. This leaves AS with just two Fox shows left: Bob’s Burgers (the rights expire in 2023) and American Dad (it isn’t clear when AS will lose this one, if ever, because sister station TBS pays for new episodes).