Do you remember the sites you have gone to ever since you started being online? For me, I always remember imdb, Red Wings Central, Yahoo! and JumpTheShark.
I still often visit the sites above. Except for one. JumpTheShark.com, which, at some point within the last couple weeks, was redirected TVGuide.com/jumptheshark.
And it has become garbage.
For those of you who never visited jumptheshark.com, or are unfamiliar with the term, “jumping the shark” essentially means: the point in a TV series when it seems to have hit the peak. Or when something happens that isn’t quite right anymore.
Jumping the shark is a colloquialism used by TV critics and fans to denote that point in a TV show or movie series’ history where the plot veers off into absurd story lines or out-of-the-ordinary characterizations, particularly for a show with falling ratings apparently becoming more desperate to draw viewers in. In the process of undergoing these changes, the TV or movie series loses its original appeal. Shows that have “jumped the shark” are typically deemed to have passed their peak.
The term “jumping the shark” comes from the show “Happy Days”; the episode when The Fonz jumps over a shark while water skiing. Kind of a strange plot for a show that takes place primarily in a diner, don’t you think?
JumpTheShark.com was an awesome site. You could go there, type in your favorite TV show, and see when people believed it jumped the shark. One popular “jump” was from Seinfeld: when Larry David left the show. Another was The Office: when Pam and Jim finally started dating. Scrubs’ “jump” votes were always funny because the most popular jump the shark moment was season 3. Meaning, all of season 3 was a complete letdown.
That was the best part. If you didn’t agree with the votes, you could campaign for your own vote! There is nothing funnier than seeing someone admit and explain when their favorite show took a strange turn. Extreme passion coupled with an insane amount of frustration is a sight to be seen!
The point is, you could go there and see what people thought, leave comments, or suggest your own jumping moments. It was a great community, presumably one of the oldest on the web. I would argue the best and most creative comments throughout the internet’s existence were found on jumptheshark.com.
Sometime around 2006, the creator, Jon Heim decided to sell the site. More power to him, he created a product, sold it, and is now a millionaire. He sold it to tvguide.com. What they have done to it in the last 20 days or so is a complete slap in the face to the jumptheshark.com community. It has become a TV show gossip page! Don’t we already have enough of those already?
TVGuide – the channel – is a celebrity gossip channel.
TvGuide.com is a celebrity gossip site, with TV listings sprinkled in here and there.
Tvguide.com/jumptheshark (yes, they redirected jumptheshark.com to that subdirectory) is a NEW gossip page.
It’s like TMZ buying Digg. How well do you think that would go over?
TV Guide acquired a fantastic product that had a ton of potential. Why they didn’t pursue capitalizing on this is beyond me. There are many large conglomerate media companies out there that own smaller (indie?), niche subsidiaries to diversify their assets. Like Paramount Vantage, for instance. Their entire existence is to give an art house feel to movies produced and distributed by Paramount Pictures.
It seems TVGuide.com insisted on shutting the door on this community to push its own agenda. I can understand that philosophy if they acquired a property similar to what they are using tvguide.com/jumptheshark for now. But they didn’t. They took a subculture and just changed it significantly, without warning or informing the community.
To add more insult to injury, they went about titling some of their columns “shark bites” and “dancing with the sharks”. Not cool. Shame on them.
If you wanted to host the community on tvguide.com/jumptheshark that is fine. I get it. You own it. You want the bragging rights. Yeah yeah yeah. But don’t shut the door on a community that started in 1997, survived the dot com bust and brought in 70 thousand unique visitors a month, just because it did not match your primary audience.
It truly saddens me that one of my favorite websites of all time, jumptheshark.com officially jumped the shark.
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Damn straight! That website use to be the best and one of my favorites. Now it’s for shit! Seems like a lot of good things are going down the toilet in this country right now….
that change in traffic is damning. somebody screwed up, and there’s even (public) numbers to prove it.
you summed it up perfectly in that last sentence.
Yeah I miss that site too! I’ve noticed in the last month that I never seem to find that site anymore, I get this stupid TV guide gossip site. Only dug into what was wrong tonight. Apparently TV guide bought the site to destroy it.
It drives me nuts that TV Guide crapped this all up.
Help the grass roots movement continue
http://www.bonethefish.com
everything you liked about JTS- only better- feel free to stop by and help post and set up topics!
We hope that everyone that loved Jump the Shark will come over and help build this new community that will be TV shows, but also music and movies that have had their “Bone the Fish” Moment
BTF Team
I can’t believe it. So much so I decided to start my own. Come visit bone the fish dot com.
http://www.bonethefish.com
Sign this petition to get JTS back!
http://www.petitionspot.com/petitions/jumpedtheshark
Something about that site must have angered TV execs. They bought that site with the express purpose of dismantling it, and they have done that.
Agreed with Nominal. Unfortunately, TV Guide is in the business of advertisement, I.E. selling the very products that people are coming to critique. TV Guide needs to push the programs as they are, not offer a forum to critique the products featured. However, it did take a couple years from the initial purchase for the complete shutdown of this open forum. Perhaps there are additional/other factors in play; like new management with little appreciation or understanding of virtual community dynamics. Sadly, TV Guide has committed it’s own \Jump The Shark\ management decision with the stewardship of this site.
I couldn’t believe it! That site is garbage, just like TV guide. When will the dumbing down stop?
I agree with your comments about the JTS site. Once it was fun, now it’s complete garbage. I went there today to see if they’d finally decided to restore the forums, which made JTS fun, but they hadn’t so I won’t visit it again. RIP JTS.
definitelly a trgic loss….thank you for the eulogy. JumpTheShark was a bit of history, now obliterated by banality. A harbinger of things to come for the internet?
I am a major classic TV fan and I loved reading other peoples views regarding when shows did “Jump the Shark”. The loss of the site is sickening mainly because I am no longer able to read other peoples thoughts, but sometimes I would just browse the site and come across a show that I hadn’t even thought about in a long time. Memories are important to most people. The dismantling of the site is dispicable.
nice post!
Why don’t we start a new one?
The site that has replaced jumptheshark.com is http://www.bonethefish.com . I see you already have a separate blog post for that but I wanted the info here so others like me who just today googled to find out what happened to jumptheshark have a handy answer in one place. Love the article though…I miss the site dearly (even though I hadn’t visited it in some time). I’d actually gone looking for it after seeing the latest iCarly where she goes in space. Yes, she has jumped the shark. More on that elsewhere however.