How Beavis and Butt-Head Became a TV Series

It was 1992, MTV was cable telivision channel that had been on the air for 11 years. up until that time, the channel focused on playing mostly music videos. Besides that they had fashion, dance and games shows based around the music at the time.

1992 MTV was trying to burst into more things with the introduction of the first season of the reality show the real world. A year before in 1991 MTV had started an animation showcase show called Liquid Television which featured the first beavis and butthead episodes.

After the first two episodes of Beavis and Butt-Head had aired on Liquid Television, MTV was insterested in making a series based on the characters.

The music channel was still trying to find their footing, they didnt have a big department devoted to animation.

Mike Judge had heard they were wanting to do something, at first, he didnt know it was going to be a show. He thought MTV was interested for short bumpers between other shows or small animated skits for other things.

liquid television who had first dibs to negotiate a deal before MTV tried to buy the characters of beavis and butt-head to no avail, they offered a contract where they would own the characters of beavis and butthead and they'd pay judge 2,000 dollars per animated short. As one animated short would take Mike 8 weeks to do, he saw that as too little. Judge blew liquid television off and after some time passed, MTV had their chance to negotiate.

Mike was needing a way to get his foot in the door, so he sold the beavis and butthead characters for a fairly cheap price compared to what they wound up being. He thought about what else could he really do on his own, getting them on MTV was the best shot he had to get things rolling.

As the original contract had people criticise mike for selling at such a low price, Mike realized that MTV's lawyers left a lot of loopholes in the contract and Mike was able to renegotiate a better deal later on.

MTV bought and now owned Beavis and Butt-Head. MTV saw that it was time to get together some focus groups to guage if beavis and butthead would be a hit as a tv series.

late 1992 they showed Frog Baseball to a focus group full of teenagers in chicago. 

The teenagers would file in, sit down un enthused at first and as soon as frog baseball started playing, they'd perk up and laugh. a lot.
Needless to say the target focus groups MTV was aiming for was a perfect bullseye. By the end of showings of Frog Baseball, some teens would mention that the end screen said to be continued and asked if there was more. Others asked if they could buy a copy of frog baseball on tape.

The woman running the focus group said from all her years of running focus groups, she had never had a reaction like she did with beavis and butthead.

MTV also ran focus groups with other demographics. Groups of adult women found beavis and butthead irritating and hated it.

The other hand, Teenage girls from New Jersey loved beavis and butthead.

Mike Judge was aware of what MTV wanted to do. When mike found out they wanted to do a TV series, he was then told by MTV they wanted him to run the series. MTV now knowing beavis and butthead would be a hit, then ordered 35 episodes to be made. Some interviews I've heard mike say they ordered 35 episodes but in the taint of greatness documentary and early newspaper articles from 1993 its said that MTV ordered 65 episodes. Regardless 35 or 65, the number overwhelmed Mike Judge, but MTV assured him they'd hire people to help.
 
MTV hired some writers, along with an animator that wasnt too great to start working on season 1 of beavis and butthead.

They gave each airing of beavis and butthead a half hour slot to be aired at 11 PM.

For the most part these half hour shows would feature two beavis and butthead shorts with music video segments in each one. As the animated shorts would only run about 4-5 minutes max, the music video segments were needed to fill time. 

Mike saw the music video segments as a fun puppet show using beavis and butthead to comment on music videos from current and not so current bands. Most of them would be ad libbed or someone would give Mike a direction before going in and run with it. He would start off in the early seasons talking about the bands and what he'd see on the video but as season went on, the music video segments got more inventive and almost became mini episode in themselves, as the boys would talk about or do things nothing related to the video that'd be playing.

When everything was squared away, the first episode of beavis and butthead as a series aired March 8th 1993.