Top Ten TV

The highest rated shows of the season, with one animated half-hour on the list:

7. Family Guy

Thanks in no small part to that gargantuan season opener, a one-hour crossover episode with The Simpsons, Family Guy is one of the most-improved series of the 2014-15 season and continues to find much of its exceptionally young audience online. The Seth MacFarlane toon, and only animated entry in the top 10, is up 18 percent from last season in the key demo and jumps to 11.7 million viewers per episode with 30 days of multiplatform eyeballs. ...

Fox continues to be the only broadcast network that programs prime-time animation, with the other three ceding the territory to Rupert's minions.

Meantime, FG continues to attract its key demographic in significant numbers, even as Mr. MacFarlane spreads his empire in new directions and absents himself from Fox Animation's studios. Staffers told me that Seth wasn't reviewing designs, scripts and boards with the same close scrutiny of earlier seasons. (It's sort of hard to do that when you're on the east coast shooting Ted 2.) When he's not on location shooting, he spends a lot of his time at his Beverly Hills office.

But delegating more authority to directors, story supervisors and others is a good thing. The show has been in production a long time, and the fact that ratings still rock, even without Mr. MacFarlane topside in the wheelhouse every day, reflects well on the strength of the FG staff.