• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 24, 2025

A&E is digging into its past to revive one of the most successful shows in its history, “Duck Dynasty.”

Plans call for the new show titled “Duck Dynasty: The Revival,” to premiere next summer, A&E announced on January 22.

The network apparently believes so strongly in this revival that it has already ordered two seasons comprising a total of 20 one-hour episodes, 10 for each season.

In its original 11-season run on A&E from 2012 to 2017, “Duck Dynasty” became that rare phenomenon, a show people talked about.

In the business of covering TV, we call such shows “talkers.” The TV Blog has lamented on several occasions the rarity of such shows in today’s fractured, fragmented TV universe.

That begs the question: Can this revival of “Duck Dynasty” capture the same lightning in a bottle that propelled it into one of the top-ranked shows of its era? Or is that era long gone today?

“Duck Dynasty” centered on a Louisiana family named Robertson and their company, Duck Commander, a manufacturer of duck calls and other hunting and outdoor-sports accessories.

The colorful characters in the show were multigenerational -- brothers, wives, children, grandparents and at least one uncle, the whimsical Uncle Si, who became somewhat of a breakout star.

The male Robertsons were notable for their ZZ Top-like beards and indeed, ZZ Top’s song “Sharp Dressed Man” was the show’s theme song. 

The household of Willie Robertson and his wife, Korie (above photo), was often the center of the domestic portions of the show where family gatherings were held. 

The rest of the “action” took place at the company’s headquarters, where some of the principals were seen choosing any number of recreational activities over the prospect of actually working.

The show was styled -- that is, produced, structured and edited -- so much like a traditional TV sitcom that it led to speculation that it was more scripted than unscripted.

The extent to which the participants may have been “coached” in their words and actions was debated at the time.

But audiences didn’t care. They just loved the show. By the time its third season concluded in April 2013, “Duck Dynasty” was averaging a total audience of 8.2 million viewers per episode, placing it in the upper echelons of all prime time shows on TV.

The fourth season starting in August 2013 did even better -- at one point averaging 9.7 million total viewers, and demo viewership of 5.3 million in 25-54, and 5.5 million 18-49 -- numbers that are virtually unheard of today.

What made the show break out from the pack of all other such shows that have come and gone before and since?

In an interview in 2012, Willie Robertson had his own theories.

“I think it’s a couple things,” Robertson said. “I think it's a show [that came along] at the right time because it’s positive.

“It has family values and that digs deeper into people. They watch it almost as a cause -- [like it’s something] they want to get to, what they’d maybe like to be. I think there is so much other stuff on TV that is not that way that it stood out, and I thought the time was right.  

“Nowadays there are just so many train-wreck shows on TV about families that will literally just do anything. That’s what I hear mostly,” he said. 

“Then, the show combines that with the comedy,” he continued. “I think because it’s funny, people laugh and it breaks down all barriers and stereotypes. It’s amazing the different people who watch it and love it -- just everybody and anybody.”

The TV world today is vastly different than the one in which “Duck Dynasty” thrived.

But at the same time, a strategy of reviving a once-successful unscripted show of this magnitude is largely untested.

If it works, it could breathe new life into basic cable as the networks comb through their own histories in search of former hits to revive.

“The Osbournes”? “The Surreal Life”? “Celebrity Rehab”? The possibilities are endless.