Broadcast
How many Americans watched the pilot for the tv show "Friends"?
Friends
After the produced pilot lived up to NBC's hopes, the series premiered with the name "Friends" on September 22, 1994 in the coveted Thursday 8:30 p.m. timeslot. The pilot aired between "Mad About You" and "Seinfeld", and was watched by almost 22 million American viewers. The series was a huge success throughout its run, and was a staple of NBC's Thursday night line-up, dubbed by the network as Must See TV. When Crane told reporters in 2001 that the ninth season was a possibility, critics believed that he was posturing, and that at least two of the cast members would not sign on for another season. When it was confirmed that "Friends" would return for a ninth season, the news was mainly about the amount of money—$7 million per episode—that it took to bring the series back for another season. After year-long expectations that the ninth season would be the series' last, NBC signed a deal in late December 2002 to bring the series back for a final tenth season. The series' creative team did not want to extend negotiations into the next year, and wanted to start writing the rest of the ninth season episodes and a potential series finale. NBC agreed to pay $10 million to Warner Bros. for the production of each tenth season episode, the highest price in television history for a 30-minute series. Although NBC was unable to bring in enough advertising revenue from commercials to cover the costs, the series was integral to the Thursday night schedule, which brought high ratings and profits to the other television series. The cast demanded that the tenth season be reduced from the usual 24 episodes to 18 episodes to allow them to work on outside projects. In fall 2001, Warner Bros. Domestic Cable made a deal with sister network TBS (both are owned by Time Warner) to air the series in rerun syndication. Warner Bros. Domestic Cable announced that it had sold additional cable rights to "Friends" to Nick at Nite which began airing in the fall of 2011 (unlike the TBS and broadcast syndication airings, Nick at Nite broadcasts of the series, which began airing as part of a seven-night launch marathon on September 5, 2011, replace the end credit tag scenes with marginalized credits featuring promotions for the series and other Nick at Nite programs). Warner Bros. was expected to make $200 million in license fees and advertising from the deal. Nick at Nite paid $500,000 per episode to air the episodes after 6 p.m. ET for six years through fall 2017. TBS also renewed its contract for the same six-year period as Nick at Nite but paid $275,000 per episode because airings were restricted to before 6 p.m. ET except for the first year. In syndication until 2005, "Friends" had earned $4 million per episode in cash license fees for a total of $944 million. Beginning on March 5, 2012, high definition versions of all 236 "Friends" episodes were made available to local broadcast stations, starting with the pilot episode. For the remastered episodes, Warner Bros. restored previously cropped images on the left and right sides of the screen, using the original 35 mm film source, to use the entire widescreen frame. These masters had been airing in New Zealand on TV2 since January 2011.