In its various incarnations, the block mainly featured situation comedies aimed at a family audience, and served as a lead-in to the long-running newsmagazine 20/20 (which has been part of ABC's Friday-night schedule since September 1987, two years prior to the original launch of TGIF).

However, ratings began declining during the latter half of the decade due partly to Fridays becoming more common for social outings among segments of the block's key demographic as well as the loss and aging quality of many of the lineup's signature shows, culminating in the end of the original incarnation after eleven years on September 8, 2000.

[6] Prior to the official launch of the block, Janicek was employed as a writer and producer for ABC Entertainment, who was in charge of promoting the network's Tuesday- and Friday-night comedy lineups.

In 1988, Janicek began gaining support for his concept by approaching the studios and talent of independently produced ABC shows, promoting the synergy and potential success of the family block brand.

Janicek, in response, came up with the idea to promote the restructured lineup under a unified brand name, Terrific Tuesday, to draw audiences to the changes, to reference the two additional sitcoms that were being offered, and especially as a nod to Who's the Boss?

Dave Coulier, John Stamos and Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen (alternating as Michelle Tanner) all appeared on the set of Full House introducing the season and series premieres that night.

The closing animation, which ran after the credits of the 9:30 program (usually Just the Ten of Us), consisted of the same theme music, albeit with the lyrics, "See you next week... here for a good laugh", followed by a few instrumental notes.

On September 21, 1990, the animated mice opening and accompanying theme music were dropped from the Friday block, in favor of a new graphics package that officially incorporated the new TGIF name for the first time.

All four TGIF shows featured as part of the block's 1990–91 Fall schedule were produced by them (a move that resulted in the cancellation of Just the Ten of Us, despite it maintaining fairly decent ratings in its Friday slot), with Perfect Strangers, Family Matters and Full House being joined by Going Places, a comedy centering on the lives of four roommates (Alan Ruck, Heather Locklear, Jerry Levine and Hallie Todd) who write for a Candid Camera-style hidden camera show.

The Brady Bunch-inspired comedy centered on two single parents (Duffy and Somers), each with three children (two of them played by former Going Places co-stars Staci Keanan and Christopher Castile), who create a stepfamily after marrying each other in the midst of a whirlwind romance while on vacation.

For example, in January 1996, Daniel Hugh Kelly, Betsy Brantley and other stars from the short-lived drama Second Noah served as one-time-only guest hosts of TGIF as a cross promotion for the new Saturday series.

The first was Boy Meets World, a sitcom from Dinosaurs co-creator Michael Jacobs with similar underlying themes as the then-recently concluded ABC dramedy The Wonder Years, centering around Cory Matthews (Ben Savage, the younger brother of Wonder Years star Fred Savage) as he navigates life with his family, friends and ever-present teacher and neighbor George Feeny (William Daniels); the series—which was the longest-running TGIF comedy series not produced by Miller–Boyett, and the only long-running sitcom to air on the block for the series' entire run—was a breakout ratings success and received favorable reviews from critics for its humor and handling of the complications surrounding the transition from childhood to adulthood.

Stars that narrated TGIF Trivia included Heather Locklear (Going Places), Telma Hopkins (Family Matters), Jodie Sweetin (Full House) and Melanie Wilson (Perfect Strangers).

Payton, in particular, had the distinction of having one of the weeks she did segment narrations on August 6, 1993, when Perfect Strangers (where her Family Matters character Harriette Winslow originated) aired its series finale.

and the use of a 1970s funk-flavored background jingle which chanted, "I've got to get over the hump", the format came complete with promos that used a special graphics scheme, differing from TGIF and ABC's nights of regular, non-concept based lineups.

Unlike TGIF and its future one-off concept I Love Saturday Night, The Hump did not use hosted interstitials or customized bumpers for the last commercial break of each show.

NBC had claimed dominant victory on Saturday nights throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, with an eclectic mix of family-themed shows and sophisticated comedies aimed at an older audience (such as The Golden Girls, 227, Amen and Empty Nest).

I Love Saturday Night was structured exactly like TGIF, with hosts from each show rotating every week, down to its own set of branding graphics and a theme song.

Such efforts to revitalize both series had been undertaken at the start of the season; Boss resolved the “will-they-or-won’t-they” plotline between lead characters Tony Micelli (Tony Danza) and Angela Bower (Judith Light), transitioning from an employee/boss relationship to a couple, while Pains (which dealt with a showrunner change spurred by creative disagreements with series regular Kirk Cameron, who became a born-again Protestant Christian four years earlier, over plot material he considered inappropriate) added a new character, homeless teen Luke Brower (Leonardo DiCaprio, whose character was taken in by the Seaver family at the insistence of eldest son Mike, played by Cameron), in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to appeal to teenage female viewers.

ET hour on that night (the former was replaced in February 1996 by the adult-skewing Tony Danza–Lori Loughlin romantic comedy vehicle Hudson Street, which was moved to Saturdays from its original Tuesday slot).

[note 4] Becoming a breakout hit out of the gate, it was ABC's most successful Friday comedy launch since Boy Meets World debuted three years earlier (in September 1993), and helped breathe new life into the lineup.

Even Boy Meets World and Sabrina the Teenage Witch (despite both shows reaching their peak viewership averages during that season) started to experience declining ratings due to strong competition from Dateline NBC and three successful midseason replacements to the ill-fated CBS Block Party: Unsolved Mysteries (which moved to CBS after a nine-season run on NBC), the Bill Cosby-hosted Kids Say the Darndest Things and the revival of Candid Camera; with the more formidable competition, after eight years, ABC ended the season dethroned as the top-rated network on Friday nights ironically by CBS, which recovered from the Block Party's initial failure by the Spring of 1998, with the help of Kids Say..., Candid Camera, Unsolved Mysteries and the Don Johnson police procedural Nash Bridges.

Hughley as the Black owner of a successful Los Angeles vending machine business, who moves his family to a predominantly white middle-class neighborhood) was moved from Tuesdays to Fridays for its second season, while the new comedy Odd Man Out (a vehicle for then-rising teen actor Erik Von Detten, about a teenage boy navigating life with his widowed mother, aunt and three sisters) joined the lineup after being heavily promoted in the summer of 1999 as a last-ditch effort to save the dying block.

ABC then opted to run dramas and reality shows such as The Mole (which only lasted three weeks); it would, however, bring back family-friendly fare to the night in June 2001 with a revived weekly version of America's Funniest Home Videos (which had been airing for the previous two years as a series of specials after a failed retool following the 1997 departure of original host Bob Saget under successors John Fugelsang and Daisy Fuentes), before eventually moving the show back to its former longtime Sunday timeslot for the 2003–04 season to accommodate the revived TGIF.

[9][10] TGIF returned to ABC on September 26, 2003; the relaunched block received heavy promotion in advance, including a promo spot employing the Village People pop tune "YMCA" (sung as "T-G-I-F"), featuring all the casts of all four family comedies seated on a humorously elongated living-room couch.

Hope & Faith was the only show from the previous season that remained on the Friday lineup for the 2004–05 season (George Lopez was moved to ABC's Tuesday comedy block, before being shifted back to its original night of Wednesday; while Life with Bonnie and Married to the Kellys were both cancelled), with 8 Simple Rules moving from Tuesdays to anchor the lineup, joined by freshman comedy Complete Savages and returning workplace sitcom Less than Perfect (transplanted from Wednesdays).

Disney Channel aired re-runs of Boy Meets World from 2000 to 2007 and briefly in 2014 (with select episodes from later seasons – particularly, seasons 5-7 – being edited and three other episodes being omitted altogether due to mature subject matter) – the latter instance was part of a programming stunt to promote its sequel series, Girl Meets World, focusing on the children of the earlier sitcom's principal characters Cory Matthews and Topanga Lawrence-Matthews (and airing in the same Friday night time slot as its predecessor).

Due partly to the continued strength of Shark Tank and 20/20 (and to a somewhat lesser degree, Last Man Standing), ABC became a challenger for CBS's usual dominance on Friday nights starting with the 2012–13 season.

[16][17][18] For its 2018–19 schedule, ABC announced it bring back comedies to the Friday night slot, with the lineup consisting of returning family sitcoms Fresh Off the Boat and Speechless, along with the game show Child Support (which experienced decent viewership for its inaugural season in the winter of early 2018).

In September 2019, the TGIF name was once again retired, no longer being mentioned in promos and bumpers, with the block being referred as to "ABC Friday Night"; the remaining sitcoms were dropped by the spring of 2020 in favor of the returning Shark Tank.