For television buffs, the website Jump The Shark emulated from when Fonzie of "Happy Days" jumped a shark on water skis. The phrase now means a moment, even in life, at which far-fetched events are included merely for novelty's sake, indicative of a decline in quality. The phrase was coined in 1985 by University of Michigan roommates Jon Hein and Sean Connolly, when they were talking about television shows that began going downhill. A dozen years later, Hein would start his own website, chronicling 200 TV shows. It became so popular that Hein later became a regular on The Howard Stern Show before selling the Jump The Shark website to Gemstar, the then-owners of TV Guide Magazine. By then, Hein had authored two JTS books.
Unfortunately, fans and contributors felt that Hein sold them out when Gemstar bought JTS for nearly $10M on June 20, 2006. Gemstar's new JTS site began weeding out negative reviews and replacing them with positive feedback about the TV programs. Unfortunately, there was one villain whose remarks even Gemstar had trouble replacing; and he carried a number of signatures at the end of his remarks.
Long before DeWayne Elbert Knight had even become acquainted with the Internet, he was always in the face of trouble. He first attempted suicide at the age of twelve; almost dropped out of high school; and nearly got Ball State University in trouble with the NCAA when he almost accepted a payout for a story on BSU athletics that was published in the student paper that was to have been reprinted in the South Bend Tribune.
After seeing his grades crash during the final semester of college, DeWayne worked a menial job transcribing radio station commercials for thirteen years until that position was outsourced. Sometime later, DeWayne came across Hein's website, Jump The Shark, and began writing all sorts of misappropriations about the speculations of everything, from game shows to The Simpsons, all the while signing his name with various pseudonyms such as Jim Shorts or Jane Belgard.
It was especially disturbing when DeWayne wanted Price Is Right host Drew Carey fired and replaced with Meredith Vieira, who had no intention of relocating to California. He even talked about this on local call-in radio shows at his home in Indianapolis. If anyone deserved singlehanded blame for bringing down the Jump The Shark website, it was DeWayne Elbert Knight.