TV Facts

The janitor from Scrubs was originally a figment of J.D.'s imagination.

Recycling a single glass jar saves enough energy to power a television for up to 3 hours.

Watching every episode of The Simpsons back-to-back would take about 12 days of non-stop viewing—over 293 hours across 801 episodes.

In 2005, German TV channel RTL aired a show called 'Sperm Race' where male contestants donated sperm samples that were then raced toward an egg under a microscope. The man whose sperm reached the egg first won a red Porsche Boxster.

In 2012, Animal Planet aired a two-hour mockumentary called "Mermaid: The Body Found" that many viewers found so convincing, they overwhelmed the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration with phone calls demanding the truth about the existence of mermaids.

In 1987, a Chicago TV station had its broadcast interrupted by a pirate signal that shows a man in a Max Headroom mask mumbling and being spanked with a fly swatter. Despite investigations by the FCC and FBI, this became the only known incident in which a hacker interrupted a major TV broadcast without getting caught.

Travis was a chimpanzee who socialized with humans since birth. He could log onto a computer to look at pictures, watch TV using a remote control, brush his teeth, feed hay to his owner's horses, water plants, and learned the schedule of passing ice cream trucks.

There was a cable network called The Puppy Channel that, for 3 years, broadcast only broadcast footage of puppies playing.

Jerry Seinfeld turned down US$5 million per episode, for 22 episodes, to continue the Seinfeld show for a tenth season.

In 1994, the Friends cast each made $22,500 per episode. Warner Bros. tried to negotiate with them individually. The cast refused. They bargained as a group or not at all. Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer voluntarily took pay cuts so all six earned equally. By the final season: $1 million per episode each. They still earn $20 million a year each from reruns. The show ended 22 years ago.

Rob Lowe was offered the role of Derek Shepherd on Grey's Anatomy. He turned it down for a CBS show called Dr. Vegas. CBS pulled it after five episodes. Patrick Dempsey took McDreamy instead. Grey's Anatomy ran for 21 seasons. Lowe later said the decision probably cost him $70 million.