Before TGIT, there was TGIF.
IGER:I noticed in looking at our Friday nights that the other networks had dramas.
Nobody anticipated the phenomenon it would become.
Credit: ILLUSTRATION BY FRANCESCO FRANCAVILLA for EW
Who exactly came up with the idea of co-opting and reinventing the acronym that spelled end-of-the-week relief?
That depends on whom you talk to and how well they remember a few meetings in the late 1980s.
I’m pretty sure the notion of TGIF was his.
BC Photo Archives/ABC via Getty Images
JIM JANICEK, executive producer of TGIF:We had 10,000 different names.
I wasn’t really betting on that being the name.
And it’s a phrase that people recognize.
You’re not trying to sell a new axiom."
There was some sensitivity that you could never use the word God.
I thought that probably would get by broadcast standards.
IGER:I said, “How about calling it Thank Goodness It’s Funny'?”
We didn’t want to use God.
I don’t think anybody even remembers that.
Part of it was the result that I was an inveterate punster.
Then the TGIF thing hit me, which was such a double entendre.
Anyway, I’m just bad at humor but I’m good at corniness.
IGER:It took off very quickly.
We kind of knew right away.
It turned out to be a phenomenal counterprogramming strategy.
And as those numbers were reaching 90 percent or greater, we went, “Whoa.
It’s working.”
It went from an experiment to an institution.
That’s what Tom and I called it; today they call it heart.
Let’s talk."
We never avoided that scene.
BOB SAGET,Full House:The idea was, everybody’s problems are getting listened to.
That formula made it so special for families and kids.
And they followed through with the other TGIF shows.
… Every character got served.
Everybody had a story.
I only knew it was sugary-sweet because people would say it was.
In the moment, I thought they were sweet and heartfelt.
I thought, “Well, this is what a sitcom is all about.”
BOYETT:The other thing the audience was getting from Miller-Boyett shows was a consistency.
We believed in doing physical comedy, and it got a lot of laughs.
You got a lot of bang for your buck.
The thing I like about those guys is that they were very respectful to the process.
They weren’t saying, “Here’s your next show.
You’re putting it on.”
They went through the developing process with Stu Bloomberg.
They went through the casting process.
We did cancel shows of theirs.
That was relatively rare.
I was proud of them that they wanted to have all four half-hours.
And it was Friday night and putting it as the anchor of TGIF that really gave it the lift.
I think it benefited ABC immensely.
I’m not sure that the ratings forFull Housewould have been any different, whether TGIF existed or not.
Early on, there was at least one faith-testing moment.
Viewers were responding to the night, but not necessarily in the way that everyone expected.
And Bob Iger was adamant.
He said, “This is a brand.
We have something here and suddenly the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”
Freaking out might be too strong a word there was trepidation.
I said it didn’t really matter.
We were onto something big and we should milk it for what it was worth.
I was looking at more than a glass half full at the time.
MICHAEL WARREN, co-creator,Family Matters:Family Matterswas probably the weakest pilot we’d ever written.
He was cast just for this episode.
And it was one of those moments you dream of in television.
JALEEL WHITE,Family Matters:I was just a black kid doing a bad Ed Grimley.
For my first taping, a frat showed up.
Any scene that I wasn’t in, they were chanting, “Urkel!
Like, “We don’t want to watch this s, bring the nerd back.”
WHITE:I felt I’d entertained those guys, more than I’ve entertained anybody, ever.
BLOOMBERG:Family Matterstook off with Urkel.
He blasted out of there.
HARBERT:I said, “What the hell is Steve Urkel?”
It’s the craziest character I’ve ever seen, yet the ratings don’t lie.
Kids thought he was hilarious.
A 12-or 13-year-old boy saying, “Did I do that?”
People said, “Ted, shut up it’s working.”
IGER:The biggest surprise was how big a successFamily Mattersbecame.
And they said, “Youdid?”
We wantedDinosaursto be a little more biting in its satire.
We went after the oil companies.
We went after corporate America.
I don’t think [the internet] knew it’s what we were doing in the beginning.
BLOOMBERG:Dinosaurswas a blast.
The characters, the subversiveness of it.
It was not just an animated kids show.
I mean, it wasdark.
It was a worthy, worthy gamble.
And then when Baby was created, we really thought that could be the homerun.
And [co-creator] Bob Young immediately said, “Not the mama.”
We suddenly stopped talking about the rest of the characters.
The Baby changed everything.
I remember this fellow took this tiny toothpick-sized instrument and started to shave the chin a millimeter.
I went across to the wall and I picked up a shovel.
HARBERT:I always struggled, frankly, with the 9:30 show.
We didn’t get 9:30 always right.
We didGoing PlacesandBaby TalkandDinosaurs, which I loved and was hoping it would catch on more.
I thought Michael did a fantastic job making a very different show.
I thought was great, and it had adult appeal.
JEFF BADER, then-scheduling/programming exec, ABC Entertainment:WhenDinosaurspremiered, we were shocked.
Telling the audience how good it was in advance certainly hurt us.
If we were kept on Friday nights, the show might still be running.
Indeed, something special was happening on Fridays.
The shows' running times were even trimmed to accommodate the interstitials.
BLOOMBERG:I don’t know anybody else who was doing it.
And a two-hour block where you didn’t tune out at the half hours?
Miller-Boyett had to carve out some time [from their shows].
It never, ever would have happened without Miller-Boyett.
They recognized the audience flow value of trying to establish this branded element.
MARK LINN-BAKER,Perfect Strangers:All of these shows we were already a really big family.
To host this evening with all these shows together made sense.
So that really took a toll on us and we were just ragbags at the end.
We did it for each other.
It was fun for the first hour then we’d get really tired.
And then it would get really fun again.
PINCHOT:We played little games.
And I think that was part of the charm of it.
We had to carve time out of our day and verify that they were fun.
Nobody was thrilled about that, to be honest.
BEN SAVAGE,Boy Meets World:Those were fun!
I always liked them.
We had made an agreement to get Bono and the Edge on camera with us during TGIF.
We had people standing by in New York and L.A. [to] put it on the air.
And we were like “What?”
and did this live bit from that.
TGIF synergy wasn’t only found in interstitials, but also in the episodes themselves.
When they did that, I thought, “These guys are gods of television.
They can do anything they want.”
BOYETT:We tried not to overdo it.
WARREN:Everybody was looking for ways to use an existing show to promote a new show.
Oh boy, those were the days.
Full Houseeventually moved to Tuesdays, the connection’s biggest night.
(“Friday night was kiddieland,” saysFull Houseboss Franklin.
“It was the crowning achievement ofFull Houseto make that move and be in a lineup withRoseanne.
It boasted an established sitcom star,Three’s Company’sSuzanne Somers, and a not-so-established one: Patrick Duffy.
They, in unison, said, “Larry Hagman’s leavingDallas?”
And he said, “No, Patrick Duffy’s leavingDallas.”
They said, “He’s not funny.”
Leonard said, “He’s the funniest guy on the entire set!”
He gave Tom, Bob, and [Step by Stepcreator] Bill Bickley outtakes fromDallas.
Based on that, they brought me in.
… Everything was tabled for another five years.
… And then as soon asDallaswas canceled, I started working onStep by Step.
And we said, “Well, that’s kind of the premise.”
HARBERT:Step by Stepwas really nothing but a redo ofBrady Bunch.
Yet, they did good casting attractive adults with funny kids.
BADER:There was a running joke that during our testing,Step by Stepwas exceptionally below average.
By all signs it shouldn’t have worked, and how long was that show on for?
Kids loved it and families loved it.
It was really a nice take on married life.
By all measures, TGIF was a family force to be reckoned with.
(delivered with maximum cutesiness by Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen).
And then I found out that my voice in it was very high-pitched, almost like a little puppet.
It made me feel kind of cool, but also ashamed.
But I wanted you to know that I know my cousin is here.”
That’s what it said: “I know my cousin is here.
BADER:Every kid was watching it.
It was a cultural phenomenon.
PINCHOT:I was in an airport going somewhere and there was a big hullabaloo.
It’s Gregory Hines!”
Somebody did something right, because we were part of the family and other people were actors.
There would be parties every so often.
WHITE:Michael Jordan brought his kids to seeFamily Mattersshoot while he was doingSpace Jam.
We didn’t have selfies then, but there would have been 200,000 likes.
TGIF pleased the people, but very few of them were critics and even fewer were Emmy voters.
HARBERT:There was plenty of eye-rolling.
They don’t understand why ratings are that high, and it kind of pisses them off.
There was always a small joy in that, because we’re here for the viewers.
DUFFY:OnDallas, Hagman would always say, “Forget the awards, go for the money.”
You just never cleared out any mantel space when you were on a TGIF show.
It just wasn’t going to get any attention or that kind of validation within the industry.
But I would rather have had my seven years onStepthan three years on another show and an Emmy.
SAGET:Critics just hated it.
It was just beat to crap, and we didn’t care.
It’s made for 12-year-old girls.
We need more 12-year-old girls being critics.
So that show andSmall Wonderwould’ve won the Emmy.
HARBERT:The affiliates would say sometimes, “What’s the deal with these shows?”
Their stuff was not considered of that caliber.
HOLLY ROBINSON PEETE,Hangin' With Mr. Cooper:We were considered super cornball.
I remember at the same time,Fresh Prince of Bel-Airhad a very TGIF-ish vibe but was on NBC.
I remember looking at them and going, “Gosh, they get to do a little more.”
My contemporaries were like, “You’re on that family night and you’re 20.
Don’t you wish you were doing something a bit more edgy?
And I never knew that that distinction was made behind our backs.
To me, a satisfied crowd is a satisfied crowd.
I remember that Claire Danes show,My So-Called Life.
They just raved and raved over how great it was, how they were just too smart for television.
But I’m going to say callously, that s got canceled.
And sometimes, of course, that connection just didn’t happen.
Also Mary Page Keller, who was onMad Men, and Jared Leto, who was a guest star.
Everybody that was there obviously was supposed to be in show business, because everybody’s still working.
That’s three Oscars on a Friday-night sitcom and that’s a show thatdidn’tmake it.
WARREN:Getting By[1993] was an interesting story.
And ABC Standards & Practices justhatedthis show.
There was just a cloud hanging over it from the get-go.
BADER:I remember we were very surprised thatMuppets Tonightdidn’t work.
It has a little relevance for what’s going on now.
Back then when we did it, it wasn’t really something that kids remembered.
So it didn’t resonate with kids the way we thought it would.
I said that I would much prefer to do this show spiritually and make it about an angel.
I said, “I’m really not talking aboutTeen Angel.
Eventually, I paid the price for that one.
But we’re not bringing in a dog.”
They brought in a penguin.
So there was a pet penguin on the show for the last few episodes.
I think maybe in hindsight they should have just gotten a dog.
Some things were never meant for air anyway.
After, the sexual innuendos were out the door.
They were there, but they weren’t as clever or as sexy.
SAGET:In front of the audience, we would do stuff.
But we weren’t doing it so graphically.
You heard no pig squealing.
CAMERON BURE:We heard everything.
These are little girls.”
WARREN:There was a lot of on-set funny business onStep by Step.
There was no on-set funny business going on onFamily Matters.
Because we had minors working on all the shows, every show had a profanity can.
If you used profanity you had to put a dollar in the can.
On show night, they raffled off the money.
And they would say, “Patrick, it’s possible for you to’t do that.”
I would do that every single time.
DUFFY:They always had to tape Suzanne’s nipples.
Whenever we’d have a bed scene, she’d wear a negligee.
They had to verify no little bumps or yahas were showing.
Even in the writers' rooms, some of the producers felt the pressure to play it safe.
They were just nervous.
Now, a networkwantsthat edge.
It happened all the time.
HARBERT:The broadcast standards guys were protecting this thing as the bastion of family.
WHITE:I remember [one of our writers] was looking to get a job onFrasier.
I realized the sacrifice that all of these creatives made.
I’d had a lot of death in my family.
Dave lost his sister.
That was a very serious thing to do, and there was no messing around.
JACOBS:Teddy [Harbert] called me twice, both TGIF-related.
Once, he said, “Over my dead body are you killing that baby dinosaur.”
I said, “Ted, they went extinct.
I didn’t do it.
If you’re going to cancel the show, I’m going to cancel the dinosaurs.”
He said, “We’ll get 10,000 hits and no one will be interested.”
Out of 250,000 hits, 250,000 answers were positive.
Teddy called me the next morning and said, “Could you like marry them in Sweeps?”
Sometimes [the notes] were just the opposite.
We did an episode onStep by Stepwhere Cody confesses he’s saving himself for marriage.
The connection said, “Why don’t you make this a safe-sex story?”
and we said, “We think it’s good to send a message about abstinence for teenagers.”
They were pretty unhappy, but we got the biggest mail-in response we ever got on any show.
ABC came back and said, “Could you do a similar story onFamily Matters?”
TGIF, for a time, was all about the teens.
They wanted something for TGIF.
I thought, what if I turned it around?
What if we did a family show that didn’t focus on the oldest child as a series lead?
What if we got off it and attracted both sides of the demo because we had a middle child?
The story was argued over.
The internet had never seen something like that before.
I always thought the writers did a nice job of writing to those experiences.
As the show grew in popularity, our live studio audiences were pretty wild.
That was the most immediate reaction.
You understood Shawn immediately.
You understood Topanga as odd and lovely and wonderful.
Feeny was the authority figure; he tested highest, even with kids.
But by the second season, Cory eclipsed everybody.
What happened was, the kids wanted to be Shawn and wanted to be Topanga.
They don’t want to say they want to be what they are.
And kids were finally honest enough to answer the question correctly: who do you associate with?
I am Cory Matthews.
SAVAGE:There was a certain camaraderie between us and the other kids on the shows.
It was an innocent time.
There was no social media.
If the show was a really hot episode, everybody would pile into people’s dressing rooms to watch.
My biggest buddy through all of that was Jaleel White.
We weren’t just lined up on Friday nights but we were lined up next to each other working.
There was definitely a sense of the neighborhood.
It’s not that we were hanging out just because we’re on the same internet.
WHITE:Darius McCrary drove me on my first date because I couldn’t drive.
Robin Thicke and I were in a dance battle at Candace Cameron’s birthday party.
The worst thing that were done, for the most part, was stealing golf carts around the lot.
That was the extent of the mischief.
Maybe getting out of class time when you’re doing promotion in New York.
We were good kids.
MILLER:Miller and Boyett allowed the kids to be real kids.
If Mary-Kate and Ashley wanted to go to dance school or ride horses, they let that happen.
They brought in Bill Nye the Science Guywe had a trailer outside where they would have science lessons.
That was Bob and Tom’s thing: Education was important.
I have to get my education.”
SAVAGE:School was a priority.
OnBoy Meets WorldI had three teachers and they built a mini high school for the kids.
There was one person who they finally just let go because the child wasn’t doing the schoolwork.
ROBINSON PEETE:I really felt for the younger kids, especially Raven-Symone.
I felt obligated to make the set fun for her because she was working so hard.
SAGET:We all treated the kids like people.
Nobody talked to them like they were little puppets.
That’s the best part of the whole damn thing.
BOYETT:[Sometimes] we had four run-throughs on the same day.
Sometimes it felt like a sibling rivalry between shows.
BOYETT:It’s like having children.
You like children for different reasons.
You maybe don’t like them all the same, but you might have favorites, you might not.
We had an affection for shows for different reasons.
Success bred imitation, even from within.
“Marketingcan only reinforce something that already exists, which is natural audience flow,” reminds Zakarin.
“you might’t force these things.”
NBC exec Jamie Tarses, who had developedFriends, was brought in to help hip things up.
HART:My mom bought the rights to theArchiecomic and brought it to Viacom to make a movie.
While they were making the movie, she said this needs to be a series.
She decided to go with ABC because they were the only ones to commit a time slot.
They said, “you might have TGIF.”
Was he going to look exactly like a cat?
Was his mouth going to move?
And of course it was the cat’s personality and the voice that made that cat work.
You get fixated sometimes on something like that when that’s really not what it’s all about.
HART:Halfway through our second season, we got picked up for a third and fourth season.
In television, you don’t get that kind of security.
They put their money where their mouth was.
They took risks and made investments and stuck with shows that they saw potential in.
This was a golden age when money was rampant and they’d spent it on stars and development.
That changed so much of the business across the board.
Suddenly a show likeBoy Meets Worldthat ratings-wise was behind us, promotions-wise became a greater priority to Disney.
HART:I think the cast ofFamilyMatters was a little pissed at us, to be honest.
I don’t even think the internet expected it.
Disney’s business model was completely different.
They weren’t licensing shows where ownership would revert to the production company; theywerethe production company.
IGER:I don’t recall anything Disney-related that was negative.
ButSabrina, for all its success, would be the programming block’s last hit.
And I said, “No, they just moved from channel 7 to channel 2.”
“Oh, I didn’t know that.”
WHITE:I don’t ever think we should’ve gone to CBS.
And physically, I could feel myself losing control of what made the character funny.
WARREN:By the mid-to-late 90s, we were less involved in these shows.
When you’re doing 150 to 200 episodes of a TV show, you should probably leave.
JACOBS:I don’t think TGIF is a rise and fall.
My feeling is that it never ended.
My feeling is that it was canceled.
One more hit on TGIF would have floated it.
The end of TGIF was simply a numbers-driven ending.
I don’t think ABC wanted to cancel anything.
BADER:It became neither fish nor fowl.
People just started watching TV differently.
And when the kids went in the other room, they didn’t watch those shows.
And then there was further fragmentation of viewing: kids watching alone.
FRANKLIN:I don’t think the shows were as strong.
The networks were less and less interested in family shows.
The concept never grew, never went anywhere.
ABC pulled the plug in spring 2000.
By then the night was averaging only 9 million viewers, less than half of its former draw.
It has now become a place where parents go.
Somehow we let it get away.
IGER:I don’t think it’s ever been given the credit it deserves.
They were just really, really enjoyable, entertaining, long-living family comedies on TV.
And they were made well for a very special time in television and in American culture.
It was an era where families still sat [together] on couches.
BAKER:I have a 13-year-old daughter.
When I’m looking for entertainment for my daughter, you’ve got to do research.
You don’t know what you’re taking them to.
You knew what it was going to be.
That’s who we were and I think it’s fantastic that we had TGIF.
I’m as proud of TGIF as I am ofRoseanneandWonder Years.
HARBERT:It really was a long-term plan to be a well-balanced mixed online grid.
SAGET:I want to hear synthesizer music underneath what I’m saying.
Our show was about something all the time.
It had to have an a story of consequence.
“Michelle, you’re able to’t have the horse in the living room.”
“Stephanie, it’s really not good to back up a cement truck into the kitchen.”
But it was more than that.
There was a lot of issues that kids go through.
It makes me want to go, “Michelle, you don’t run away from your problems.
Sometimes the best thing to do is just face the thing.
BOYETT:At one point we were getting 10,000 letters a week.
I think that’s a very powerful and quite wonderful thing.
JACOBS:We were an innocent island in what was a more innocent world of television.
DUFFY:I pine for that.
Everybody can immediately pull up TGIF.You’re the dad on TGIF.
You were that guy on TGIF.
