[MUSIC - TEARS FOR FEARS, "EVERYBODY WANTS TO RULE THE
WORLD"]
I hate this channel.
No!
[BEEP]
I think that if someone was going to give the year of 2018
a slogan, it just might be nostalgia is a hell of a drug.
Once considered a mental disorder,
nostalgia causes us to collect memories,
filtering out the negatives and sinking into the positives.
It clouds our judgment.
It makes it hard for us to look forward.
This is why we prop up so much of popular culture
as far greater than it really was.
Right now, we're in the midst of a pseudo '90s renaissance.
Snapbacks are still huge, Full House
has been rebooted on Netflix, and there's
an entire cable channel dedicated
to one decade of a single network.
A network that, for a period of time,
had taken over popular culture on an unprecedented scale.
Nickelodeon was everywhere.
In a day and age where kids have access
to hundreds of TV channels, video platforms, content
curation sites, it's becoming increasingly
hard to imagine a time where to find something to watch,
you flip to one of 10 channels and you
were happy with your options.
But what if I told you there was an era of television
that combined nostalgia with, well, actual real quality.
On April 1, 1979, a new network would have its first broadcast
in that very environment.
It would be the first dedicated all-children's channel,
designed to be used as a selling tool for the first big wave
of cable subscription services.
It was a network specializing mostly
in live action shows that would air for half the day.
Five years into that network's life, and it was going about as
poorly as it could.
That isn't an exaggeration.
The network would spend years finishing dead last
amongst all cable networks and ratings.
Seriously, dead last.
Enter Geraldine Laybourne.
Laybourne would take over as president of Nickelodeon
in 1984, after years of sinking ratings
and corporate confusion.
And she would begin a five-year process
of rebranding the network.
Nickelodeon would no longer be the network known
for reairing Tom and Jerry.
Instead, Nickelodeon was about to change
the world of animation and how we viewed
cable networks altogether.
[MUSIC - SCHOOLHOUSE ROCK!
THEME]
(SINGING) As your body grows bigger, your mind must flower.
It's great to learn, because knowledge is power.
In the late '80s and early '90s, so much
of children's programming had a singular focus--
education.
Whether it was the overt programming of Schoolhouse
Rock!, or the family teachings of Alvin and the Chipmunks,
children's networks and programming blocks
were focused on appealing to parents as much as they were
the children watching them.
Nickelodeon, on the other hand, was ready to take a risk.
They built programming around kids
in a way that was normally reserved
for teens and the MTV crowd.
Ren and Stimpy, Aaahh!!!
Real Monsters, Rocko's Modern Life-- these
were some of the first original animated programming
to air on the network.
They were wildly creative, subversive bits of animation
that spoke to kids instead of at them.
They didn't teach.
They didn't educate.
They did nothing but entertain.
They were scripted segments of childhood imagination.
They celebrated that childhood.
They celebrated their audience.
They didn't set out to mold it.
And this idea would carry the programming
throughout the '90s, even in the more balanced shows
like Rugrats and Doug.
Nick had begun dominating the animation space,
and they began to understand their audience better
than maybe any other children's network at the time.
Creative Team at Nickelodeon wanted
to make sure that those kids watching those animated shows
could grow with the program.
And so they respected that growth in their approach
to their live action blocks, things that
originally built the channel.
Not content with being just another set of cartoons
and children's comedies, Nick set out
to offer kids an imitation of adult programming
that their age group simply wasn't being offered--
game show programming that was as weird
as it was entertaining, the now ubiquitous green slime
coating the ideas of everything from Double Dare
to Guts, giving kids a chance to watch people their age, just
like them, do the very things they wish they could be doing.
After that midday block ended, just while Saturday Night Live
was dominating late night, Nick attacked that market, as well.
All That, to this day, is maybe the greatest sketch comedy
show geared towards a younger demographic.
It took everything that made SNL successful
and placed it in the hands of children.
A comedy with just a single adult,
the show's fake producer, performed by kids, for kids.
It bred talents like Kenan Thompson
and led to successes like Kenan & Kel and The Amanda Show,
which in turn, produced Drake & Josh.
Nickelodeon created this style of entertainment
with the idea of maintaining a demographic,
throughout their youth, by creating through the lens
of diversity in content.
This era of quality and original programming,
this diversity in programming, opened the door for Nickelodeon
to expand.
Expand in ways that, at the time, only Disney
had been capable of.
Nickelodeon was ready to be more than a cable network.
Nickelodeon was ready to take over.
This aggressive pop culture expansion
would start in 1990 with Nick Magazine, a comedy magazine
filled with games, jokes, its own mascot, comic strips,
facts, slime food recipes.
It was a natural extension of the network.
It wasn't a hobbled-together marketing ploy.
Every issue was crammed with detail, with intrigue.
It was exactly what the network was, in print form.
A celebration of being a kid.
It was reading for them.
A magazine for them.
Kids could write in and ask the president of the network
questions that would be answered the next month,
or compete in speech bubble competitions.
It was a level of engagement that most television networks
only dream of.
Now, Nickelodeon wasn't just on screens, it was on shelves.
Nick Magazine extended the network's reach
beyond television.
It made reading a priority for millions of children,
and for many, was a primary factor
in developing a love for reading.
And then, they decided to reverse engineer the Disney
approach, and ensure their place in popular culture as more
than a cable network by taking the brand out
into the real world.
To do this, an idea was cobbled together
that was both practical and functional for the audience.
Nickelodeon Studios would open at Universal Orlando in 1990.
It was a haven for kids.
Fans of the network of all ages could go and watch
live tapings of nearly all of Nick's original programming.
Studio was more than a theme park attraction.
It was a fully functional production studio.
Everything from All That to Double Dare 2000
was shot right there, within full reach of its audience.
You could tour the facility, see how the shows are made.
It was an opportunity no other children's network
was offering its viewers--
to be a part of the entertainment.
Nickelodeon was now a place.
You could go there.
You could be a part of it, and it was as real
as television could be.
Nick was a brand, a brand that you could attach yourself
to outside of the one show you like
or the one character you relate to, a brand you could
read about, visit, ride, watch.
And after following all of this up with the Nick Hotel,
Nickelodeon had completed a decade
and a half of utter domination within the zeitgeist
of television.
It's 2019.
And it's been almost 30 years since the beginning
of what people consider the network's golden age.
Nickelodeon has changed.
It hasn't gone downhill, it's just adapted.
We've grown.
Nostalgia tints the lens with which
we view the programming that, at the time, was made for us.
That's no longer the case.
Now, Nick is focused on a new generation.
But what Nickelodeon was in the '90s
will likely never be replicated.
The way that it made a generation of kids
truly feel like a part of something bigger than just
cartoons.
The anarchy with which they approached
their live and animated programming, the beauty
of a brand that wanted more than its competitors
and knew exactly how to get it.
If nostalgia is our way of combining the best of something
and forgetting the worst, it's very easy
to do that with that generation of Nickelodeon.
It's very easy to only think about the good,
because there was so much of it.
The '90s may be over, but for an entire generation,
that green slime will forever be a part of who they are.
In that--
[LOUD RIP]
Hey!
No!
[INAUDIBLE]
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