 |
| 1981-84 logo, after Warner-Amex Satellite Entertainment spun the network off as one of the MTV Networks |
Over the past few years, there have been more positive events that have occurred, whether or not there have been any behind-the-scenes struggles between multiple groups of people over whether or not their endeavors will eventually be successful, or whether or not they should even be given the slightest of chances to begin with. Sometimes, the forces preventing some new endeavour prove to be too influential, and the ideas promoted by the people on the other side never end up getting their new ideas “off the ground”, so to speak. One of those struggles that could have very well prevented more than a few promising show-business careers from “taking off” was the one between Viacom-owned children/teen-oriented cable channel Nickelodeon and the creator of so many of its top series over the years… If it wasn’t for this man and the people around him, you might not have heard of at least half of the actors/actresses/performers/shows to have emerged from Nickelodeon over the past bunch of years!
The man I was referring to when I referred to “this man and his people” was actor/musician/producer/screenwriter Dan Schneider. His association with the network actually goes back to the 1990s, when the network was settling more and more into its current format and launching all the shows that carried it into the new millennium. There seemed to be a bit of a divide at the network in his earliest years: almost anything he "green lighted" was successful for longer amounts of time, while anything handled by anybody else that wasn't animated (given the successes of those shows) only lasted for a short time before being cancelled. While Schneider was busy building future talents, the network was busy with non-television ventures: Nickelodeon Studios opened in 1990, signaling the network's branching off into live entertainment, considering almost all of the shows aired there were, at least initially, aired live on one of the network's growing number of channels. One part of the network was just as much of a constant back then as it is now: Nick @ Nite, which dates back to the main network's earliest days, when it still signed off during primetime. Other than that constant, the network was constantly manœuvering its schedule to fit its viewers' choices, which almost seems like such a foreign concept on television nowadays. Around the middle of the decade, the network cancelled the last of its remaining original shows, freeing up all of those people to move on to some new careers, especially a certain French Canadian actress looking to enter the music industry! (looks/sounds familiar, doesn't it?)
Aside from Schneider's efforts at bringing up future multi-talented television and something else people, the network mostly launched animated shows, practically all of which remained through the beginning of this decade, if not still remaining to the present day. The network, having progressed through its 1980s struggles and 1990s changes and shifts, mostly remained content with its own lineup throughout the 2000s, leaving Schneider to do his usual bidding in launching various "live-action" series. (For those of you who are wondering, no, "live" and "live-action" are not the same, for reasons I would encourage you to talk to any television people about!) Speaking of "live", Nickelodeon Studios closed down in 2005, moving its shows to Hollywood (since where else, other than perhaps N.Y.C., would hopeful actors/actresses hope to go?) In 2007, that building became home to the Blue Man Group, which changed the building's name to the SHARP Aquos Theatre soon after moving in. That wasn't the only entertainment company/technology company deal to take place that year, however; Nickelodeon signed a then-four year deal with Sony Music (which, as if it did't need any future "top of the charts" hits back then, was already active on the business side!) to "produce and (more importantly) finance music-themed TV shows" over all of its channels.
That deal, however, didn't produce many immediate results, and the lack thereof proved to make the once-ubiquitous network relatively obscure by 2009, when it decided to drop all the branding with which we, as viewers, had become relatively accustomed to noticing over the years. The rebranding was mostly centred around the network's secondary channels:
- TEENick, which I personally never cared for, although I guess I was one of the viewers that channel targeted during its March 6, 2001 to February 8, 2009 run… For a few months afterward, the shows that had aired on TEENick when it shut down were all over the place, but on September 28, 2009 (incidentally, on the other side of that year's DTV transition), those shows moved over to TeenNick, which itself had taken over from The N just a few days earlier! That new channel was where most of the network's newer shows launched, and that is where they continue, as the main channel seems to be more devoted to airing all different types of shows instead of focusing itself as it did in earlier years, before all the changes!
 |
| A few of the network's 1984-2009 "splat" logos with which the network enjoyed its biggest success |
That same day, both Noggin, which actually started as a partnership between Nickelodeon and the Children's Television Workshop, and Nick Toons TV, which was initially a digital cable-only channel, became Nick Jr., bringing that name back "into the fold", and Nicktoons, also bringing that name back "into the fold" with the company! While those changes occurred, the main channel changed its instantly recognizable "splat" logo to a word mark closer to its early 1980s "globe" logo, changing the network's logo to such an extent for the first time in overa quarter century! The following year, the 2007 Sony Music deal finally produced some programming; unfortunately, the "one-hit-wonder" Big Time Rush came first, at least from what I noticed, instead of the other, more successful (in the long term) show produced as a result of that deal, Victorious, which might not have set any ratings records, but when you look at all the other opportunities that the show has given its cast members, I'd much rather have that on any network instead of some show that sets records at the beginning of its run (to the tune of 6.8 million total viewers, according to Nielsen), only to crash afterward and get cancelled in favor of the only other show resulting from the exact same business partnership!
 |
| the 2010-present logo, under which aside from a few shows, the network has dropped off from its 1990s and 2000s mega success |
Had the network made the decisions to put its longer-term shows in front of those shows that lost whatever initial ratings momentum they might have had, it probably wouldn't have suffered the losses it did after the beginning of the decade, as its ratings after the beginning of 2010, when the network continued its usual ratings dominance, certainly helped by BTR's initial record-breaking performance and the slowly, yet surely, growing exposure for Victorious, but after that, it was all downhill, as George Szalai of the Hollywood Reporter explained in 2011, after the network had spent most of the year below the top spot in the ratings in all the categories the network fit in to back then, quoting Viacom CEO Philippe Dauman:
"On his company's quarterly earnings call, he described the 15 percent-20 percent ratings decline as "inexplicable" given what have typically been "very predictable" ratings at Nickelodeon. Dauman said the two firms are "investigating this aberration," which he also called an "anomaly," to "understand and rectify" the situation.
"
From there, however, as BTR faded from the network's lineup, and the guys in the "boy band" with the same name faded from the music charts, the network's decline only continued, as it didn't post any weekly ratings gains between September 2011 and November 2012, during which all the shows that the network launched at the beginning of the decade left its lineup, one by one by one… Even with that good news on the ratings front, the gain that the network posted then was only around two percent, which would work if the network hadn't posted drops week after week over the previous 14 months. As if that wasn't surprising enough, it might very well have been the network's top competitor across demographics, advertising, and even some crossover between the two companies: Disney and its Disney Channel! For 2012, a year in which Nickelodeon returned to its normal ratings gains, the Disney Channel swept the top of the ratings across all of its categories: ages 2-11, where Nickelodeon had been for the previous 17 years, ages 6-11, and ages 9-14 in the daytime… In primetime, Disney was at the top among ages 6-11 and 9-14, as it was in the daytime ratings.
Just because the once proud Nickelodeon experienced that drastic ratings decline throughout the last quarter of 2011 and most of 2012, doesn't mean it didn't try to fight back, and that it did, bringing back Dan Schneider after a little over a year to produce his newest series, Sam & Cat, with faces and names familiar to him, since he worked with most of them previously, and familiar to those of us who've followed the television, and, in this case, the music industries, and judging by the ratings successes seemingly across the board for many shows across all kinds of networks in 2013 (especially on FX, where my current favorite series, The Americans debuted last January and is currently awaiting its second season at the end of this month), it looks as if that show has quite a few years left in it after its (currently in progress) debut season, assuming nobody else decides to suddenly launch a (hopefully successful) music career to follow up the initial television exposure!
No comments:
Post a Comment