MacFarlane explained the reason he left Fox for NBCUniversal.

Seth MacFarlane is one of the most well-known names in television today, thanks in no small part to his role as creator of the long-running animated sitcom, Family Guy. Since its premiere and to this day, Family Guy has been a mainstay on the Fox Network’s weekly animation block, along with other shows that MacFarlane has had a creative hand in. However, while Family Guy is still airing, MacFarlane doesn’t actually have a contract with them anymore, having broken off from the company in 2020 in favor of NBCUniversal. According to MacFarlane, who spoke at the Produced By conference over the weekend, this was the end result of a “complicated” relationship with the network and concerns about the direction of Fox News.

“It’s an incredibly complicated relationship that I have with that company,” MacFarlane explained. “There are people there with whom I have great personal relationships. There are people that I like a lot. But it is a different company than it was when I started. It’s very difficult for me to reconcile exactly what my relationship is with that company right now.”

“I, like many people, have a lot of issues and a lot of objections to their practices. Certainly, the news division and the entertainment division operate relatively independently of each other, and that’s something that allowed a lot of us to sleep a little better.”

Seth MacFarlane Talks Growing Beyond Comedy and Separating From Fox at Produced By https://t.co/prkWpKRvZv

— Variety (@Variety) June 12, 2022

“My overall reaction – and I know I’m not alone – to what the company does and how they communicate what they choose to communicate and what they think is acceptable is, I have a lot of objections.”

“The tragedy for me is that I think there actually, in this day and age, really is an opening and a need for, God help me, a conservative news outlet that is rational and that presents an opposing viewpoint in a way that is thoughtful and that acknowledges the truth and acknowledges science and acknowledges the reality of the world around us. And that doesn’t really exist.”