The Teenagers

The Teenagers is an American primetime adult animated sitcom revolving around the life of a Philadelphia teenager CJ Hemple, voiced by Dax Shepard. It was created by James Sharp, who had previously worked as a writer on seasons 2-7 of The Simpsons. The series first broadcast on NBC in 1997.
Following its initial cancellation by NBC, The Teenagers began airing reruns on Nickelodeon's Nick at Nite in 2000. Eventually Fox revived it for 7 Seasons.
==Characters==
* Christopher Joseph "CJ" Hemple (voiced by Dax Shepard)
* Philip "Pip" Hemple (voiced by Hayes MacArthur) - CJ's brother.
* Amber Hemple (voiced by Andrea Savage) - CJ's sister.
* Marlene Hemple (voiced by Julie Hagerty) - CJ's mother.
* Spike Hemple (voiced by Bob Odenkirk) - CJ's father.
* Plaqueo (vocal effects by Frank Welker) - a short bluish gray dog.
* Bella (vocal effects by Dee Bradley Baker)
* Elizabeth "Lilly" Crumpington (voiced by Paget Brewster) - CJ's love interest and best friend.
* William "Bill" Lawrence (voiced by Dave Attell)
* Deniz (voiced by Tara Strong) - Pip's love interest and best friend.
* Coach Terrance (voiced by Maurice LaMarche)
* Benjamin "B" Jeremy (voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson) - a prisoner also CJ and Pip's friend.
* Albert Harouna (also voiced by Kevin Michael Richardson) - a comic book man
* Death (voiced by Jim Cummings)
* Violy Anderson (voiced by Cate Blanchett)
* Willow Schneider (voiced by Sarah Silverman)
* Tamaki Nakamura (voiced by Lauren Tom)
* Freddy (voiced by Paul F. Tompkins)
* Laurie Hanski (voiced by Tress MacNeille)
== Additional Voices ==
* Frank Welker
* Dee Bradley Baker
* Jim Cummings
* Kevin Michael Richardson
* Pamela Hayden
* Tress MacNeille
* Tara Strong
* Billy West
== Guest Stars ==
* George Carlin
* Brendan Fraser
* Steven Weber
* Wallace Shawn
* Fred Armisen
* Fred Willard
* Gilbert Gottfried
* Alex Trebek
* Ian Whitcomb
* Drew Carey
* Patton Oswalt
* John Tesh
* Ron Popeil
* Tom Kenny
* Tony Little
* Clarence Clemons
* Micheal McKean
* Dr. Demento
* Ryan Rennolds
* Jack Plotnick
* Emo Philips
* Terry Gaurd
* Dick Clark
* Weird Al Yankovic
* Bill Nye
* Steven Spielberg
* Bob Barker
* Charles Fleischer
* Victoria Jackson
* Lily Tomlin
* John Cena
* Taj Mori
* Dick Van Patten
* Macho Man Randy Savage
* Jim Parsons
* Pat Sajak
* Vanna White
* Steve Harvey
* Rosie O'Donnell
* Duncan Brannan
* Al Rooker
* Richard Karn
* Bill Cosby
* Louie Anderson
* John O'Hurley
* Ellen DeGeneres
* Matt Groening
* Seth MacFarlane
==Production==
The show was created by James Sharp, who along with James L. Brooks served as executive producers. The Teenagers was produced by Sharpness Knight Studios in association with Fox Television Animation, the same company behind The Simpsons. The show's It was co-produced by Patric Verrone.
Sharp was a writer on The Simpsons and had been approached by series creator Matt Groening to design a spin-off centered on Ned Flanders. Their pitch featured many similarities to The Teenagers – Ned would be a teenager in a not-so-normal family living in Philadelphia and working for a filmmaker resembling Steven Spielberg. Groening turned down the idea, instead wanting the Fladers spin-off to be a live-action series led by the character's animated voice, Harry Shearer.
In 1993, Brooks approached Sharp with the idea of a sitcom based on a morning television program. The pair adapted their Fladers pitch to the new idea. Brooks recommended Dax Shepard as the lead. He initially turned down the role due to him attending UCLA at the time, so at the last moment, the series became an animation. The Teenagers was originally pitched to Warner Bros. Animation as 5 Minute shorts for the sketch show Mad TV, but the plan changed, because MADtv's budget was not large enough to support animation production. Eventually, Sharp and Brooks were approached by 20th Century Fox Television and then The Teenagers was greenlit by NBC.
The Hemple family first appeared as shorts on NBC's Saturday Night Live on April 15, 1995. Sharp submitted only basic sketches to the animators and assumed that the figures would be cleaned up in production. However, the animators merely re-traced his drawings, which led to the crude appearance of the characters in the initial shorts. The animation was produced domestically in the basement of James Sharp's own house, with Wes Archer, David Silverman, Brad Bird and Bill Kopp being animators for the first season. 
In 1989, a team of production companies adapted The Teenagers into a half-hour series for NBC. The team included the Film Roman animation house. Brooks negotiated a provision in the contract with NBC that prevented the network from interfering with the show's content. Sharp said his goal in creating the show was to offer the audience an alternative to what he called "the mainstream trash" that they were watching. The half-hour series premiered on December 25, 1997, with "Merry Christmas from The Teenagers". "Let This Show Spread it's Wings" was the first full-length episode produced, but it did not broadcast until May 1998, as the last episode of the first season, because of animation problems, though this was because the episode was the first to be outsourced.
=== Animation===
Several different U.S. and international studios animate The Teenagers. Throughout the run of the animated shorts on NBC's Saturday Night Live, the animation was produced domestically in the basement of James Sharp's own house. With the debut of the series, because of an increased workload, Fox Television Animation subcontracted production to several local and foreign studios. These are Hanho Heung-Up, Toon-Us-In, Yearim Productions, Anivision/Sunwoo, Yeson Animation, Digital eMation and Rough Draft Korea in South Korea, Fil-Cartoons in the Philippines, Pacific Animation Corporation and Spectrum Animation in Japan, Mr. Big Cartoons in Australia, Slightly Off Beat Productions in New Zealand, Carbunkle Cartoons in Canada, Varga Animation in Hungary, Shanghai Morning Sun Animation in China, and Wang Film Productions in Taiwan.
For the first Fourteen seasons, Film Roman animated The Teenagers in the United States. In 2012, Fox Television Animation began doing all of the domestic production in-house. 
The production staff at the U.S. animation studio, Film Roman, draws storyboards, designs new characters, backgrounds, props and draws character and background layouts, which in turn become animatics to be screened for the writers at Sharpness Knight for any changes to be made before the work is shipped overseas. The overseas studios then draw the inbetweens, ink and paint, and render the animation to tape before it is shipped back to the United States to be delivered to Fox three to four months later.
The series began high-definition production in the direct-to-home media movie; "CJ's Big Score", which was released on DVD and Blu-Ray on September 26, 2010. The move to HDTV included a new opening sequence. James Sharp called it a complicated change because it affected the timing and composition of animation.
==Cancellations, syndications and revivals==
===NBC's First cancellation===
The Teenagers officially premiered on December 25, 1997, with "Merry Christmas from The Teenagers". The show debuted to 22 million viewers and garnered decent ratings in NBC's Sunday Night Lineup. At the end of its first season, the show ranked No. 15 in the Nielsen ratings, with 16.3 million households tuning in. The show launched its second season in a new time slot, Thursday at 9 pm, on September 12, 1998. The Teenagers was filling the void left by NBC's Seinfeld, although the series' ratings decreased, coming in at No. 110 in the Nielsen ratings with 7.9 million households tuning in. On July 24, 1999, NBC ordered 26 additional episodes of The Teenagers to form a third season.
The show returned for a Third Season on September 23, 1999, where it was constantly beaten in the ratings by ABC's then-new breakout hit Who Wants to Be a Millionaire (a situation that was later referenced in CJ Hemple: The Untold Story). During its second and third seasons, NBC frequently moved the show around to different days and time slots with little or no notice and, consequently, the show's ratings suffered. And NBC cancelled the show on March 7, 2000 after airing 53 out of the 65 episodes that were originally produced.
===Nick At Nite reruns and Cult success===
20th Century Fox attempted to sell the rights for reruns of the show, but finding networks that were interested was difficult; Nickelodeon eventually bought the rights "basically for free", according to the president of 20th Century Fox Television. The Teenagers premiered in reruns on Nick at Nite on April 20, 2000, and immediately became the block's top-rated program, dominating late-night viewing in its time period versus cable and broadcast competition and boosting viewership by 239%. The complete first season was released on DVD the same week the show premiered on Nick At Nite, and the show became a cult phenomenon, selling 400,000 copies within one month. Sales of the DVD set reached 2.2 million copies, becoming the best-selling television DVD of 2002 and the second-highest-selling television DVD ever, dethroned one year later by the first season of Comedy Central's Chappelle's Show. The second and third seasons DVDs release also sold more than a million copies. The show's popularity in DVD sales and reruns rekindled NBC's interest, and, on May 20, 2002, NBC ordered 23 new episodes of The Teenagers, marking the first revival of a television show based on DVD sales.
===NBC's revival and second cancellation===
===Comedy Central revival ===
==Episodes ==
Season	Season	Episodes	Originally aired 	Originally aired 	Originally aired
Season	Season	Episodes	First aired 	Last aired 	Network
 	1 	13 	December 25, 1997 	May 17, 1998 	NBC
 	2 	26 	September 12, 1998	May 18, 1999 	NBC
 	3 	14 	September 23, 1999	March 7, 2000 	NBC
 	3 	12 	July 11, 2001 	February 14, 2002 	Nick At Nite
 	4 	23 	November 3, 2002 	May 18, 2003 	NBC
 	5 	22 	November 2, 2003 	May 23, 2004 	NBC
 	6 	15 	November 7, 2004 	May 15, 2005 	NBC
 	7 	15 	September 18, 2005	May 14, 2006 	NBC
 	8 	12 	January 28, 2007 	May 20, 2007 	NBC
 	9 	22 	September 23, 2007	May 18, 2008 	NBC
 	10 	24 	September 28, 2008	August 30, 2009 	NBC
 	11 	16 	June 20, 2012 	September 4, 2013 	Comedy Central
 	12 	18 	September 15, 2014	June 1, 2015 	Comedy Central
 	13 	22 	January 25, 2016 	June 27, 2016 	Comedy Central
 	14 	22 	November 7, 2016 	September 11, 2017	Comedy Central
 	15 	22 	December 25, 2017 	April 8, 2019 	Comedy Central
 	16 	22 	April 15, 2019 	April 27, 2020 	Comedy Central
 	17 	22 	April 13, 2020 	December 21, 2020 	Comedy Central
 	18 	22 	April 19, 2021 	October 25, 2021 	Comedy Central
 	19 	22 	January 24, 2022 	December 19, 2022 	Comedy Central
 	20 	22 	March 27, 2023 	December 18, 2023 	Comedy Central
==Broadcast and streaming==
Internationally The Teenagers is available to stream on Paramount+, except in Latin America, where the series is exclusively available on the standalone service Star+.
The Teenagers premiered in Australia on April 9, 1999, on Seven Network, in 2000 on Fox8, and on Eleven on 11 January 2011. Initially, only 2 seasons were available to stream on 10 Paramount+ due to preexisting contracts. The other 17 seasons were added on December 1, 2021, after the contract expired.
In Canada, the series premiered January 31, 1999, on CTV and September 1, 2003. Beginning in the 2015–2016 season, the show moved to CTV Comedy Channel. In addition to Teletoon at Night and CTV Comedy Channel, the show has been syndicated to TVtropolis (now DTour).
The show airs in India on Star World Premiere, in Ireland on 3e, and in New Zealand on TVNZ Duke; previously it screened on defunct channel Four.
In the United Kingdom, The Teenagers premiered in September 1998, originally on BBC2 and BBC Choice. From October 2003, Channel 4 started screening The Teenagers. until Season 11 where the show moved to ITV 2 in 2014, while Channel 4 would continue to hold the rights for past seasons until 2016.
In South Korea, the show premiered January 11, 2008, on Tooniverse.
==Films ==