MTV

MTV is an entertainment channel launched on August 1 ,1981. Its animation department was responsible for the contest in 1997 to find a new series that Pete Williams won by default with The Click. After multiple failed pitches, it was picked up by MTV and sent to Decode Entertainment for co-production in early 2001, under the name Undergrads.

The series premiered on MTV on April 22, 2001 and aired all 13 episodes, however, MTV did not advertise the series at all and moved it around the schedule at an per-episode basis to the point where viewers reported not being able to find it by Episode 7. During that time Teletoon picked up the show in June for Canadian broadcast, where it was advertised and reran for a decade (mostly to comply with CRTC laws), and gave the show a strong Canadian fanbase.

MTV considered Undergrads a financial failure, along with the majority of their animated shows, and shelved the series immediately after showing the final episode, Screw Week, and erased any mention of it on their website and channel. They reportedly informed Decode Entertainment about the cancelled, but not Pete Williams, who did not discover this until his MTV key card stopped working and had to file for unemployment. Comedy Central, a sister station of MTV, picked up Undergrads for temporary reruns in winter 2001.

Also without Williams' knowledge, Decode tried to fund a Season 2 as a Teletoon original but both stations lacked the money, and MTV was refusing to neither fund nor give up the rights to the series (which Williams had signed to them indefinitely) and it laid cancelled for many years and the creators moved on to other projects.

Williams was invited to a ConBravo 2013 panel on Undergrads by the other head writers, which ultimately gave them the drive to fight for the rights back to Undergrads. After being passed on from lawyer to lawyer (all MTV members who had handled Undergrads had left by then), they eventually got the rights to make a movie from MTV in 2018.