Didn't Jump the Shark jump the shark years and years ago? I always found it to be a terrific and succinct explanation of a very real television phenomena...and pretty much nothing else. Mostly just a lot of people arguing over when, or if, a show had ever jumped. Which, I dunno...some people may find that kind of thing fascinating, but I find it pretty tedious after a few minutes. More power to Hein, but I'm not entirely sure what TV Guide is buying here. Maybe just the domain name itself, which I guess still has some cultural cachet.

Can we start a discussion on when TV Guide jumped the shark? I'd say it was when they stopped using those 15 second commercials from the late 70s. Those were great!

Okay, it's official, Jump the shark has, umm, jumped the shark. I hereby forbid anybody from using it in a post or comment on this site.

"TV Guide" ruin something? You mean like when they started covering Hollywood movies and stars in the mid-90's? Or when they decided their covers were SO precious, they had to do multiple ones practically every week as "collector's editions"? Or when their Fall Preview coverage got so weak, it was bested every year by "Entertainment Weekly"? Or when they abandoned the local listings idea and the compact format (a 50-year plus tradition, and what was left of their identity) and went to a standard size magazine that focused on TV celebrities, with LOST on the cover every other week?

Them? Screw something up?

(OK, I admit that their web site isn't bad for discussions, gossip, and reviews, and they have some very good contributors there.)