20 Mind-Blowing Facts You Never Knew About American Dad

12. The Pilot Is The Most Viewed Episode...

American Dad first aired mid-season, with its initial run only consisting of seven episodes (later seasons have closer to twenty). While this obviously gave it less of an opportunity to make a big impression, it did allow the first episode to air in the coveted post-Super Bowl spot in February. This led to the show's best ever viewership, with 15.1 million people tuning in to see the Smith's debut.

And they can't have been disappointed; it's a pretty strong episode, throwing itself straight into a complicated plot with Steve running for Class President and Roger helping Hayley cheat on a paper. The show retained a good chunk of the audience when the series proper started in May, but by the time the first season was over the audience had more than halved. Still, for something like this, 7 million is pretty solid.