ABC’s TGIF Creator Clarifies Acronym Didn’t Stand For “Thank God It’s Friday”

deadline.com:

ABC‘s TGIF programming block had viewers hoping for Friday nights to watch their favorite sitcom. Over the years, many people believed the acronym stood for “Thank God It’s Friday.” However, in a new interview, Jim Janicek, who help create the programming block, clarified that the letters stood for “Thank Goodness It’s Funny.” “We were talking about things like the ‘Friday Fun Club,'” Janicek said on Pod Meets World about the names they considered before TGIF. “There’s a whole list somewhere I probably could dig up, but I remember that one.

You know, ‘It’s Friday Night.’ Lots of little short-isms.” Janicek recalled that the network’s executives were initially worried that using TGIF would cause problems with a chain of restaurants. “We did our first animation, which kinda was more childlike, with a little mouse called Friday the Mouse.

We were animating that with a guy by the name of Bob Kurtz, who runs a company,” Janicek explained. “I don’t know if he’s still around, but [Kurtz and Friends Animation] did the original commercials for Shell and for [Sinclair].” He continued, “I was with him.

We were animating the open. And then [ABC executives] Stu Brower and Bob Iger called and said, ‘We’ve landed on TGIF. We wanna call it TGIF.’ So that’s where we got the name, and we started animating those letters into the open and went from there.” Janicek noted that “time was ticking” on making the animation happen, adding, “Bob, I believe, came up with ‘Thank Goodness It’s Funny,’ to avoid any conflict with any restaurant.” The TGIF programming block began in the fall of 1989 with Full House, Family Matters, Perfect Strangers, and Just the Ten of Us, shows which led into newsmagazine 20/20.