Jump The Shark Origins
Hein has explained that he and some friends at the University of Michigan were discussing when popular television shows began to decline, and his roommate Sean J. Connolly coined the phrase, referring to a Happy Days episode in which Fonzie performed a water ski jump over a shark. The phrase "jumped the shark" became code between Hein and his friends for the moment that a television show began to decline, and became inspiration for the name of the website.
Hein sold his company, Jump The Shark, Inc., to Gemstar (owners of TV Guide) on June 20, 2006 for "over $1 million". Some Stern staff have speculated that the site sold closer to $5–$10 million, however. The TV Guide website has since redirected the original jumptheshark.com website. For some time, the website was replaced with a celebrity gossip message board. As of April 2011, the tvguide.com redirect the Jump the Shark address to a TV Guide page categorizing some common show derailments.
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Famous quotes containing the words jump, shark and/or origins:
“If you like to make things out of wood, or sew, or dance, or style people’s hair, or dream up stories and act them out, or play the trumpet, or jump rope, or whatever you really love to do, and you love that in front of your children, that’s going to be a far more important gift than anything you could ever give them wrapped up in a box with ribbons.”
—Fred M. Rogers (20th century)
“They will tell you tough stories of sharks all over the Cape, which I do not presume to doubt utterly,—how they will sometimes upset a boat, or tear it in pieces, to get at the man in it. I can easily believe in the undertow, but I have no doubt that one shark in a dozen years is enough to keep up the reputation of a beach a hundred miles long.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Lucretius
Sings his great theory of natural origins and of wise conduct; Plato
smiling carves dreams, bright cells
Of incorruptible wax to hive the Greek honey.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)