King of the Hill finally said goodbye in 2010 after a whopping thirteen seasons, but here's why FOX decided to end things when it did. Premiering back in 1997, Mike Judge's creation stands as one of the longest-running primetime animated programs in TV history. It spent much of its existence as part of FOX's famous Sunday night Animation Domination programming block, alongside other long-runners like The Simpsons and Family Guy. While those two shows are often compared, King of the Hill stood out by going a different route.
Unlike Simpsons or Family Guy, which revel in over-the-top gags and taking refuge in audacity, King of the Hill is more of a realistic animated sitcom. That's not to say things didn't get wacky or weird at times, as this was still a sitcom. Overall though, the triumphs and struggles of Hank Hill, his wife Peggy, their son Bobby, and Peggy's niece Luanne as they go through their fairly average lives in the small Texas town of Arlen, proved a lot easier for most to relate to than the craziness found on their contemporaries.
King of the Hill's long-term success made it all the stranger when FOX abruptly decided to cancel the show in 2008, prior to its already produced season 13 premiering. Reports now suggest a King of the Hill revival is coming, but here's why its original ending was so sudden.
Most of the time when a broadcast TV show gets canceled by its network, poor or declining ratings are the primary reason. If enough people in the advertiser-coveted 18-49 viewer demographic aren't tuning in, the show's value is questioned. That's partially the case with King of the Hill, as while the ratings for its final seasons were somewhat consistent, they also were noticeably down from prior years, and that didn't look great when shows like Family Guy were performing much better on the same night. However, ratings aren't the whole story.
FOX was also looking to clear a spot in the Animation Domination line-up for The Cleveland Show, Seth MacFarlane's Family Guy spinoff centered around Cleveland Brown and his family. This would give MacFarlane three different animated shows on FOX at once, with American Dad also running strong. One can argue that was a poor decision as The Cleveland Show while running a respectable 4 seasons, isn't really remembered that well today, and had much less of a lasting impact than King of the Hill.
Disappointingly, FOX did viewers a disservice by ultimately not airing season 13, instead sending those episodes straight to syndication outside of the series finale. Sadly, King of the Hill's series finale episode also wasn't really anything special, as it was not planned in advance to wrap things up, and was basically just a standard installment. Hopefully, the coming revival lets Judge end the show on his terms.
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