The series originated as a collection of annual standalone short films that started with Ida Makes a Movie, a live-action adaptation of the Kay Chorao book which premiered on the CBC on December 8, 1979.

Linda Schuyler, a seventh and eighth grade teacher at Earl Grey Senior Public School in Toronto, formed the company Playing With Time with Kit Hood in 1976.

She sought the advice of then-lawyer and future Epitome Pictures co-founder Stephen Stohn,[5] who advised her to forego a lawyer, and instead propose the deal herself.

[2][note 1] By 1982, the CBC, enamored with the short films that Hood and Schuyler were producing, ordered five more, effectively turning the annual movies into a television series.

[13] On July 31, 2007, WGBH Boston Home Video released The Kids of Degrassi Street: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1.