| Nickelodeon | |
|---|---|
 | |
|
Launched |
December 1, 1977 (as Pinwheel) |
|
Owners |
Warner-AMEX/Warner Cable (1977-1986) |
|
Country |
United States |
|
Headquarters |
New York City |
|
Sister Channels |
Nick Jr. Channel |
Nickelodeon (often short to Nick and formerly known as Pinwheel) is an American baseline cable and satellite television network. It is owned by the Nickelodeon Group, a unit of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global.
This is the company that created the show Ni Hao, Kai-Lan, but mostly aired in reruns on its sister channel, the Nick Jr. Channel.
History[]
The Nickelodeon was started in 1979 by two USC media arts students, Linda O'Connor and Carl Davis, who wanted to present more classic film in Columbia. They created a nonprofit organization, rented a storefront near the University of South Carolina campus, cranked up a 16 mm projector, and started showing films.
Early History[]
The channel began life as a test broadcast on December 1, 1977, as part of QUBE, an early cable television system broadcast locally in Columbus, Ohio. The channel, now named Nickelodeon, launched to a new nationwide audience on April 1, 1979, with Pinwheel as its inaugural program.
Relaunch as Nickelodeon[]
Pinwheel was relaunched as Nickelodeon: the First Network for Kids in 1981. It extended its hours from 8AM (EST) to 8PM (EST) by turning its channel over to the Alpha Repertory Television Service(ARTS) and later, for about a year, A&E Network. At one point the channel just went to a test screen after a sign-off. Its original logo was a silver pinball with Nickelodeon title in front in multicolor. Nickelodeon's first popular series was You Can't Do That On Television, a Canadian sketch comedy that made its American debut on Nickelodeon in 1981.
Success in the 90s and 2000s[]
By October 1990, Nickelodeon was seen in 52 million homes across the United States. In 1990, Nickelodeon opened Nickelodeon Studios, a television studio, in Orlando, Florida at Universal Studios Florida and entered into a multimillion-dollar joint marketing agreement with international restaurant chain Pizza Hut, which involved launching Nickelodeon Magazine, which was available for free at participating Pizza Hut restaurants. In 1991, for the first time, Nickelodeon developed its first animated series, Doug, The Ren and Stimpy Show, and Rugrats. These series, known as Nicktoons, premiered on August 11, 1991. The network had previously refused to produce weekly animated series due to high cost. The three Nicktoons found success in 1993, while in mid-1993, Nickelodeon developed its 4th Nicktoon, Rocko's Modern Life, which was also a success along with the three other Nicktoons. Later, Nickelodeon partnered with Sony Wonder and released top selling video cassettes of the show's programming. By 1994, Doug ended production, but Rocko's Modern Life, The Ren and Stimpy Show, and Rugrats were still in production and airing. In mid-1996, Nickelodeon developed two new Nicktoons, KaBlam! and Hey Arnold! which would take the place of Rocko's Modern Life and The Ren and Stimpy Show since they would both have ended production about that time, but still would air re-runs up until about 2001. Rugrats, on the other hand, was still airing. The show got very popular in 1998, when The Rugrats Moviecame out. The movie grossed more than $100 million in the United States and became the first non-Disney animated movie to ever sale that high.
Rebranding and Plans for the Future[]
Nickelodeon had announced in February 2009 that Noggin and The N were to be rebranded as Nick Jr. and TeenNick to bring both channels in line with the Nickelodeon brand identity. Nickelodeon later announced in May 2009 that Nick Magazine would be discontinued by the end of the year. In July 2009, Nickelodeon unveiled a new logo for the first time in 25 years on the packaging of Nickelodeon DVDs coming out beginning that month, the Australian service, and that year's Nickelodeon Animation Festival, intending to create a unified look that can better be conveyed across all of MTV Networks's children's channels. As of September 28, 2009, the new logo is used across Nickelodeon and Nick at Nite, along with the rebranded TeenNick, Nick Jr. and Nicktoons (formerly The N, Noggin and Nicktoons Network, respectively) channels in varying versions customized for brand unification and refreshment purposes; a new logo for Nickelodeon Productions also began being used in end credit tags on all Nickelodeon shows, even on episodes aired before the new logo took effect (end credit tags of programs airing on TeenNick, Nick Jr. and some shows on Nicktoons only use the current Nickelodeon Productions logo and variants for their respective channel's original programming on episodes of series made after the rebrand). New York based creative director/designer Eric Zim rebranded Nickelodeon, creating the new identity, logos, and the look and feel. In addition to creating the new Nickelodeon corporate logo, he created a whole new logo system to represent the company’s entire family of sub-brands (including digital networks Nick Jr., Nicktoons, TeenNick and Nick at Nite). Though it is mainly a wordmark, during the days prior to the 2010 Kids' Choice Awards, the logo bug was given a blimp background to match the award given out at the show; and beginning the week of September 7, 2010 the logo was formed by a splat design (a la the 2006-2009 logo) in the on-screen program bug during new episodes of its original series. The new logo was adopted in the UK on February 15, 2010, in Spain on February 19, 2010, in Asia on March 15, 2010 and in Latin America on April 5, 2010. The "Nickelodeon on ABS-CBN" block on ABS-CBN in the Philippines adopted the rebranded logo on July 26, 2010. On November 2, 2009, a Canadian version of Nickelodeon was launched, in partnership between Viacom and Corus Entertainment (owners of YTV, which has aired Nick shows for several years, and will continue to do so); as a result, versions of Nickelodeon now exist in most of North America. On May 12, 2010, after an agreement was reached with Haim Saban (who earlier that month had bought back rights to the Power Rangers franchise from The Walt Disney Company), Nickelodeon agreed to air an eighteenth season of the series, and the production resumed in late 2010 for. The new show, Power Rangers Samurai, is scheduled to debut sometime in 2011; as part of the deal, Nickelodeon also plans to air the existing 700-episode catalog of the series on the Nicktoons cable channel later that year. On January 1, 2011, Nickelodeon debuted a new original series, House of Anubis. The show, which was based on the series Het Huis Anubis which aired on an international version of Nickelodeon in The Netherlands, became the first original scripted series to be broadcast in a weekdaily strip (in a similar format to a soap opera) and the first original series produced by the flagship Nickelodeon in the United States not to be produced in the United States or Canada.
Logos[]
Main Article: Logos On The Nickelodeon Wiki