mikejudge

It looks like the Fox "Animation Domination" lineup will be changing. It took FOX long enough to put together a solid two hour block of animated cartoons on Sunday, but now comes word that the tides are a-changing. After thirteen years on the air, King of the Hill will wrap production at the end of this season. Of course, there will be new episodes in the can for airing even into next season. Not to mention that this isn't the first time Hill has been canceled, and ratings now are better than they were then. In fact, executive producer John Altschuler said, "It would be very odd for King of the Hill to not keep going."

At the same time, Seth MacFarlane's "other" show American Dad, has just been picked up for a fifth season. It makes sense for FOX to let King of the Hill go at this time, considering that Family Guy spin-off The Cleveland Show is waiting in the wings. On the other side, though, shouldn't they wait to see if that's going to work before they dump a solid perennial performer like Hill? The way they're going, Seth MacFarlane is going to own Sunday nights.

As usual, FOX leaves the best press conference (at least as far as I was concerned) for last. I sat through Karl Rove and Chris Wallace getting contentious with the critics near the end of the FOX News panel (more on that later), Jerry O'Connell and the cast of Do Not Disturb strain to answer questions about a show whose clip reel wasn't all that funny, and the millionaires from Secret Millionaire talk about being poor for a week. All of it was made worth it (and, really, seeing Rove start to get annoyed near the end was fun to watch) so we could see the final panel: all the producers of all FOX's Sunday animated shows.

The first person who spoke up, not surprisingly, was Seth MacFarlane. "Is this where Karl Rove sat? Because I don't want to get AIDS." Wow. Unfortunately, no line that was said after that was as shocking or funny. But it was all still pretty good.