In 1998, TBS aired Tom Stern's "Monkey-ed Movies". Forty-eight of the short segments were produced to run during the feature-film program "Dinner and a Movie" and in odd time slots after sporting events. However, one day when a golf tournament ran short, the station played about half an hour of "Monkey'ed Movies" to unexpected results. The ratings actually increased, which prompted TBS to order 13 episodes of an expanded half-hour series. Aiming for a young male audience, TBS placed "The Chimp Channel" on Thursday nights at 10:05 p.m. ET following the network's top-rated professional wrestling show "WCW Thunder". An April 1999 press release noted the series' original title as "Channel of the Apes". The renamed "Chimp Channel" debuted on June 10, 1999.