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How Seth became a billionaire

November 13, 2008

Seth MacFarlane was basically fated to this life. His middle name, Woodbury, was chosen by his mother as an homage to the town drunk back in Kent, Connecticut. "Some of the foulest jokes I've ever heard," he has said, "came from my mother." MacFarlane started drawing at 2 and published his first cartoon, Walter Crouton, in a local paper at the age of 8. At 18, he left for the Rhode Island School of Design and, after his adviser sent his thesis film, Life Of Larry (starring a lovable schlub with a tolerant wife and a talking dog), off to Hanna-Barbera, he was hired to work as an animator and writer on shows like Dexter's Laboratory and Johnny Bravo. In 1996, he created a sequel to Life Of Larry that aired in prime time on the Cartoon Network. Fox development executives took notice and hired him away to work on interstitials to run between sketches on Mad TV.

A few years later, Fox asked MacFarlane, then 25, to develop an animated pilot, giving him a scant $ 50,000 to do it. MacFarlane emerged three months later with a nearly completed pilot, for which he had drawn every frame and voiced every character.

Fox bought the show, gave MacFarlane a reported $ 2 million per season contract, and premiered Family Guy in the highest-profile slot possible, following the 1999 Super Bowl. He was the youngest person ever to be given his own primetime network show.

It drew 22 million viewers but then became a sort of network foster child. For the next two years, Fox execs moved the show all over the schedule, trying it in 11 time slots, including in the death zone opposite Friends. Despite the fact that Family Guy tracked well with young men, the show's ratings were low. Fox cancelled it in 2000, revived it briefly the next year, then cancelled it again.

Image: A still from Family Guy

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