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A Brief History Of DegrassiTNGHO On Its Two Year Anniversary
by thedonoman
Creating and running this Yahoo Group and Website has been a collaborative effort involving many people and many, many, MANY hours of hard work. The following is the Hangouts "Behind The Music," which outlines the history of the last two years. We'd like to take a minute to first off thank ourselves (pat on the back), but more importantly to thank our dedicated members. For without you, it would not be worth it all.
February 2004
American fans of Degrassi: The Next Generation learn that The-N will air the final ten episodes of Season 3, six months after Canadian broadcaster CTV. (They later found out the number was whittled down to 8, as Accidents Will Happen has still yet to air in the U.S.) Thedonoman, avid fan of the show, learns of this news and begins contacting Canadian fans in an attempt to acquire the episodes on VHS before The-N airings. He plans to sell copies of the tapes on Ebay, however is shut down by Degrassi Star Pat Mastroianni soon after embarking on the business venture.
Early March 2004
Meanwhile, Cerebral Assassin finds himself tackling his own issues. The moderators of the Degrassi Board at TvTome (i.e. TV.com), delete the longest thread in the boards history -- a fan fiction chain story spanning pages upon pages with multiple contributors from the board. Being one of the upset fans, Cerebral decides to start a Yahoo Group where fans of the show could continue the chain story without the hassle of TvTome, or simply "hang out" and talk about Degrassi.
March 7th, 2004 -- DegrassiTNGHO Yahoo Group is born!
While this is going on, Thedonoman ditches his efforts to sell Degrassi Tapes and decides to share the remainder of season 3 with fans for free through episode downloading. While awaiting a tape from Canada containing the remainder of season 3, he captures "Pride" to test out his video software. He joins DegrassiTNGHO on March 8th, and a day later brings up the topic of file sharing on the message board. Shortly after, citing the fact that nowhere online provides information on Degrassi Episode Downloading, Cerebral Assassin and Thedonoman (newly added moderator) begin capturing the first three seasons of the show with plans to share them with fans across the country. Concurrently, Cerebral Assassin begins updating the group with the most recent news on Degrassi for the fans to keep up to date. These two staples of TNGHO help it find it's unique place within the Degrassi Community.
Late March 2004
Things at the Yahoo Group are going well, Cerebral Assassin continues to update the site with news. And the group's member count is rising steadily. Group member, "toxic dollie," even donates some web space to host the newly made Degrassi video files. Of course, with bandwidth being a major issue, this does not last long and the site is shutdown. Quickly however, Thedonoman and Cerebral Assassin formulate a new plan to share episodes through a p2p program called Soulseek (as suggested by member campkill32). In depth directions are created, and a small community of users is grown through the message board.
April 2004
Cerebral Assassin and Thedonoman add one new episode each day to the list of files shared through the group, including other specials aired through The-N like the “Degrassi Crash Course” series. While many members of the group are becoming acquainted with Soulseek easily, others are having more trouble. This leads to the constant updating and simplifying of the Soulseek directions and FAQ’s at the groups board.
May 2004
With the arrival of a VHS tape from Canada, Thedonoman captures episodes 314-322 and with the help of Cerebral Assassin and many of the groups members, the remainder of season 3 is finally put online. For the first time, American fans will not have to wait for The-N to air episodes of the show. And in fact, are served an added bonus when The-N chooses not to air AWH at all.
Music Videos (clips of the show dubbed with fans’ favorite songs) begin widespread circulation throughout Soulseek. The various videos display many different characters stories, with many different songs and many different moods.
Early Summer 2004
TNGHO formally introduces the "Episode Of The Day" and begins sharing one new video file every day. After completing the first three seasons of TNG, work begins on bringing fans the older series’, "Degrassi Junior High" and "Degrassi High."
Shaydra7 is appointed Moderator of the message board to help share the new files, and keep the formerly used "Hot-list" file up to date for Soulseek users. All the while the groups membership numbers continue to rise.
Late Summer 2004
TNGHO enlists the help of two new moderators to help control the ever growing message board hosted at the Yahoo site. After deciding to require all messages be approved on August 24th, two days later Mandelion and Adam4ever are appointed as mods.
September 2004
Shortly after the Canadian premiere of episode 401/402 "Ghost in the Machine" TNGHO is contacted by Johnnie1wb, a Canadian fan of the show and a video encoder. Thanks to him, Degrassi fans in the U.S. are able to keep up with a season right along with Canadians for the first time ever!
Week after week, for 22 episodes. Cerebral Assassin, Thedonoman, mandelion, shaydra7 and Adamo4ever (as well as countless other group members), dedicate one night a week to sharing the newest episode with 1000's of Soulseek users.
Fall 2004
TNGHO runs there first ever DVD giveaway contest. Members are asked to recall numerous facts from the show, such as: what is the production number of the episode where Sheila mentions lamb stroganov? Or how many hours of research did Liberty conduct in her science experiment? Members were then challenged to take the numbers to the many questions, add, subtract, multiply and divide; and arrive at a final number. The five users who guessing correctly compete in an AIM speed quiz, where HPGAflips@yahoo.com got 8 of 10 questions right in just 63 seconds, winning a free copy of the DTNG first season DVD!
January 2005
After gaining 8000 members within less than a year, NY Times Staff Writer Ben Neihart contacts Thedonoman via email while putting together a piece on Degrassi: The Next Generation and it's fan base. The interview with Thedonoman is summarized here.
During the Super Bowl www.godaddy.com advertises inexpensive website domains. Thedonoman purchases "www.degrassitngho.com" and he and Cerebral Assassin quickly start work on the site with the goal of opening by the one year anniversary of the group.
February 2005
Cerebral Assassin slaves at his computer becoming better acquainted with html and putting together templates for the new site. Mandelion, group moderator and owner of www.mandelion.com offers to host the site.
March 2005
March 7th, 2005 -- www.degrassitngho.com is born!
Read the welcome message here.
Updates on the new site are frequent and it becomes clear that TNGHO is a unique site, offering not only news on the show, but Columns as well. Including a CD review of Cassie Steele's debut, commentary on the-N's edits and episode reviews.
March 10th, fact checker of NY Times Douglas Gillison contacts Thedonoman and Cerebral Assassin to confirm information found within the Degrassi article. The article can be read here.
April 2005
The month is kicked off with an April Fool's joke, where TNGHO claims to have acquired pages of the first season 5 script. Checkout the joke here.
Thedonoman continues writing his review of season 4, going one episode at a time analyzing the general story structure of the season. Along the way, he adds many comments in regard to individual episodes and points out some of the writers subtleties perhaps missed on the first viewing.
May 2005
TNGHO affirms it's popularity, when they become respected enough to have a hacker donate time out of their day to upload trojans to the site. The problem is quickly remedied, and fans continue to enjoy the newest updates.
The reader mail column is started where fans can contact the owners of the website to make comments or questions in regard to the content of news and columns.
June 2005
TNGHO runs its second DVD contest ever, more simply this time fans are asked to count the number of kisses seen in Season Two. skrtncytf@yahoo.com wins the prize, by answering with the correct number first: 34.
September 2005
Cerebral Assassin comes up with the idea of adding a message board to the website, instead of using the Yahoo Board at the group (now with over 13,000 members). Quickly, hundreds of members sign up to use features that the Yahoo Board simply could not offer, such as avatars, banner signatures, and an easier way to organize discussion.
TNGHO is treated to a surprise when contacted by a PR firm promoting Stacy Mistysyn's appearance in “The Affairs of Anatol.” As a result, they are given the opportunity to conduct an interview with Stacie that can be read here.
Season 5 premieres in Canada and with the help of new encoder Channan, Americans fans can view the episodes on their original air date or soon after. Season five is primarily shared through links on www.yousendit.com and www.megaupload.com. This helps to alleviate users’ issues with Soulseek.
October 2005
Site member and frequent video encoder, fb45dtng, is appointed moderator status to help keep things at the forum in order. Fb45dtng also becomes a contributing writer to the columns section of the website, offering commentary on the occurrences in the Degrassi World throughout season 5.
A new column is added to site weekly, to preview the newest upcoming episode of Degrassi set to air. The columns include production numbers, episode synopses, quotes from the episode and an insiders look at what is to come.
November 2005
Cerebral Assassin begins publishing his reviews of Season 5 in the columns section under the title “First Impressions.” In many ways he picks up where Thedonoman left off with his “Season Four Wrap Up.”
January 2006
Through an unnamed source TNGHO receives exclusive access to all 12 Degrassi “Webisodes” set to air through The-N.com over the course of the spring and summer. Soon after Thedonoman writes a small column previewing the happenings of the Webisode series.
March 2006
Cerebral Assassin and Fb45dtng work hard to revamp the sites message board. They give it a new look matching the sites theme colors of red and black and also reorganize each of the threads to offer users a more friendly experience. The updates are timely, as TNGHO celebrates its two year anniversary!
Which brings us to the present. Running this site is a lot of fun and a lot of hard work. We plan to do it as long as the show is still on the air. If you have any comments on the website or the content of it, please utilize the message board, or email the owners/mods through the contact page. If there is anyone who would like to become a contributing member of our columns section, feel free to submit work to us for review, edit and possibly publish!
Again, we’d like to thank everyone (named above or not) who has helped along the two year ride in bringing fans all things Degrassi! We enjoy doing it, and we’re *hint hint* always accepting donations to our PayPal Fund (below) to help with Domain/Hosting costs and running more contests for YOU the fans.
Cheers to Degrassi,
DTNGHO
The above article was published by dTNGHO, please credit if cited or used
author contact info: donovan@korn.zzn.com
