Sam and Friends (Del Mar Network TV series)

Sam and Friends (stylized as Sam & Friends) is an American animated sitcom created by J. Hughes and produced by Del Mar Cartoons Ltd. for Del Mar Network. It was the very first program produced by the studio after a nine-year development in 2020.

The series first premiered on September 18, 2020.

Premise
Sam and Friends follows the misadventures of six main characters, residing in the fictional neighborhood in Los Angeles, California called "Warner Street." Sam McPherson, the titular character, is currently a high school student with a not very bright IQ level which resulted in him being held back a few times. He is friends with Robo-Mike, a smart, intellectual robot and a roommate. They are neighbors with Scott "Scotty" Bolognacaugh, a stick figure-like person from an alternate universe who is way dumber than Sam and receives worse grades than him, obsessed with bologna sandwiches, and has the mentality of a 5-year-old, Ash and Lee Johnson, the smart, bubbly, yet sometimes ditzy twins at 13-years-old (14-years-old starting in Season 2), and Samantha Ryde, a rich girl and Sam's girlfriend.

Development
When Hughes founded Del Mar Cartoons Ltd. in 2011, he wanted to develop a show featured six friends being placed in random situations. But the problem was, no character designs or names were created, or any personalities were assigned. The first character to be created was a man named "Sam", who originally was going to be called a human version of TTS voice, Microsoft Sam, but found that it would be infringing on Microsoft's trademark, thus resulting in adopting the name "Sam McPearson" instead (who would be later re-named Sam McPherson in mid-2019). Shortly after the creation of Sam, more characters were created including robot Robo-Mike, a TTS-based character Scotty (who left the show after the Season 3 finale), twins Ash and Lee Johnson, and girlfriend Samantha Ryde.

During the time of development, the Samantha Ryde character was originally going to be an angel from the skies above, but the idea was softly turned down as the show wanted to focus more on satirical comedy rather than having it being a full-blown drama program with material that many critics would claim "wouldn't make any sense for the audiences watching". However, the developments of the other main characters remained unchanged.

As the coloring of the characters began shortly after their first designs were revealed (which are now forever lost), Sam's skin color was white (which was later changed to a more realistic flesh color in mid-season 3). After nearly nine years within the show's development along with character design changes in art style evolutions, Del Mar Studios Corporations' animation division has announced a new television network in November 2019, which will include its first production, Sam and Friends among other projects to date. With the show's pilot episodes, "Tee For Three" and "How Do You Voo Doo?" debuted in November 2019 and February 2020 respectively, production for the show officially began in mid March 2020 as the show was officially greenlit by the company for its new basic cable television network.

During production of Sam and Friends' first official season for a fall 2020 broadcast, which many storyboard artists had to work from home on account of the COVID-19 outbreak, a company called Colibri Group Ltd. has acquired a 25% stake in the Del Mar Entertainment Group, which resulted in the company being a partial division of the Colibri company. The animation for the show was produced domestically at Saerom Animation.

While human voice actors were gathered for the show's production, dozens of other characters such as Robo-Mike were voiced by computerized TTS voices.

The half-hour series officially premiered with both "Negative Sam and the IWAY Cookies" and "The Twins Next Door" on September 18, 2020, the same day that Del Mar Network first hit the airwaves on a handful of cable providers.

Series overview
"Main article: List of Sam and Friends (Del Mar Network TV series) episodes"

Syndication
The cable and satellite television channels ColibriTV and Toon TV, siblings of Colibri Group Ltd. has exclusive cable and syndication television rights for Sam and Friends.

Two weeks after the show's debut on Del Mar Network, ColibriTV premiered Sam and Friends on October 4, 2020, while the show debuted on Toon TV on January 1, 2021 with a New Year's marathon featuring all of the episodes from the first season aired chronologically.

The Ash and Lee Show
On February 19, 2021, it was announced that a Sam and Friends spin-off is in development. On May 23, it was announced the spinoff will be titled The Ash and Lee Show. The plot will focus on 18-year-olds Ash and Lee and their friends attending at a college located in downtown Burbank, where they take their learning capabilities to a different level. It was confirmed production of the series began in June 2021.

On October 29, 2021, it was announced that the series would premiere on January 22, 2022.

All About Brenda
On March 16, 2022, it was reported that a Brenda Robinson spin-off titled All About Brenda was in development with a 13-episode order. Additionally, it was reported that the show would be targeted towards a mature audience unlike The Ash and Lee Show and Sam and Friends, which are geared towards families. The series premiered on Del Mar Network on March 18, 2023, with the series set to be available on DMN+ on April 7.