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Fox King of Animated Family Sitcoms

The FOX Broadcasting Co. continues its tradition of excellence in primetime animation with AMERICAN DAD, a new series from FAMILY GUY creator Seth MacFarlane. The much-anticipated return of FAMILY GUY is projected for summer 2005, when the acclaimed animated series will follow its DVD success with a fourth season on FOX. FOX also re-upped animated family sitcoms THE SIMPSONS (for a 16th season) nd KING OF THE HILL (going into season nine), making the network tops in its commitment to animation in primetime among public access, non-cable broadcasters in the U.S.

FOX will launch year-round programming initiative in June with the premiere of six new series that will allow the network to introduce and nurture a significant amount of new programming prior to the kickoff of the traditional broadcast season in September. FOX, which preempts most of its entertainment schedule in October for the Major League Baseball playoffs and World Series, will return most of its veteran series, (The SIMPSONS at 8:00 pm on Sundays and KING OF THE HILL, 7:30 pm, Sundays), to the air in November, and then launch another wave of series in January (AMERICAN DAD) and beyond, it was announced by Gail Berman, president, entertainment, for the FOX Broadcasting Co. during its upfront ad meetings.

MacFarlanes AMERICAN DAD, airing Sundays at 9:30 pm in January 2005, is the animated story of STAN SMITH (voiced by MacFarlane), who works for the CIA and is constantly on the alert for terrorist activity. Stan will go to extremes to protect his beloved America from harm as evidenced by the terror-alert color code on his fridge, and his frequent knee-jerk reaction of shooting holes in the toaster whenever the toast pops up. Stan has a conventional wife and teenage children plus two rather unconventional members. There's ROGER (voiced by MacFarlane), the sarcastic space alien Stan rescued from Area 51 who deeply resents the fact that he's not allowed to leave the house, and KLAUS (voiced by Dee Bradley Baker) a lascivious, German-speaking goldfish the result of a CIA experiment gone seriously wrong. Exec producer/writers on the series, produced by 20th Century Fox Television, are MacFarlane, Mike Barker and Matt Weitzman.