View Full Version : Jump the Shark Thread?


Retro4Life
05-18-2009, 10:15 PM
I REALLY enjoyed reading the comments section of the old "jump the shark" site before TV Guide bought it out and apparently deleted them all. I participated a lot at that site and it provided me with hours and hours of great diversion, nostalgia and food for thought.

Does anyone think starting a similar thread here would be of any value or have any appeal? Not sure precisely how it would work; maybe we could have a whole forum category devoted to it, or maybe just a thread where one show would be highlighted a week or something.

At any rate, I miss that site! :(

Retro4Life
05-18-2009, 10:16 PM
I guess technically we'd have to call it something else, since "JTS" is copyrighted. :) Maybe "When did it go bad?" or something...

TMC
05-19-2009, 12:57 PM
http://www.bonethefish.com/

Long story, short.

TVGuide crushed a site that was near and dear to many viewers, and had us laughing daily. The powers that be at TV Guide decided: let's take a great community, a very interesting concept and a ton of valuable input and make it a redirect to a subdirectory of garbage that looks like a tabloid. That was the great demise of one of the greatest websites of all time, which unfortunately fell victim to its own namesake (which will not be named here, but we are sure you can figure it out)!

We vowed to keep the spirit of "the site that shall never be named" alive in theme and spirit. That spirit was given a name in March of 2009- "Bone the Fish". This early time frame is when things can fall apart without the help of the fans - be it a movie series, tv show, celebrity or movie group. We value the opinions of our new fans and community, and we realize that people indeed want to vote on their favorite BTF moment.

So take a minute, sign up for the new BTF revolution and comment and vote until your fingers are worn to the bone!

What Happened to JTS? Jump the Shark?

The term "Bone the Fish" was created in direct reference to TV Guide parent Gemstar. Sometime in 2006, Jon Hein decided to sell the website known as "Jump the Shark" or "JumptheShark.com". Hein sold his company, Jump The Shark, Inc., to Gemstar (owners of TV Guide) on June 20, 2006 for "over $1 million". After Jon Hein sold it he went to work with Howard Stern. Some Howard Stern staff have speculated that the site sold closer to $5-$10 million, however. We like to say that was the point in time when the website Jump the Shark "Boned the Fish".

Around January/February 2009, Gemstar decided to redesign the website. With this new redesign they decided to scrap all the old content and make JTS a redirect to their gossip blog site. Some argue that this is the point in time when the website "Boned the Fish".

It was a complete slap in the face to the jumptheshark.com community. The icing on the cake was Gemstar had the audacity to redirect the old JTS site to a subdirectory of TVGuide.com, basically they bought page views looking for Jumptheshark.com. To show how clueless they are, they went about titling some of their blog columns "shark bites" and "dancing with the sharks" to get more readers.

Retro4Life
05-19-2009, 03:26 PM
Thanks. :)

browneyes106
05-19-2009, 05:27 PM
I missed the comment section on the old JTS site. I used to spend hours laughing at the comments and thinking about a lot of stuff.