When did Nickelodeon start to decline?

[The Overlord]

It's a cliche to say Nickelodeon has gone down hill since its heyday from the 90s and 2000s where they aired shows like Hey Arnold and Avatar the Last Airbender and nowadays they only air SpongeBob and the Loud House and everything else like Harvey Beaks and It's a Pony is sent to Nicktoons to die if they can't match the ratings of the two flagship shows.

So when did Nickelodeon start to decline?

 

[Fone Bone]

It didn't decline. You just outgrew it.

 

[The Overlord]

It didn't decline. You just outgrew it.

I think you are not getting my point.

I am not getting mad at some kids network that no caters to my tastes as an adult. I don't have nostalgia for Nickelodeon, I grew up in Canada and Nickelodeon content was filtered through local networks.

I do think one can argue they do not have the diversity of content they once had, which is ultimately there business. However, the thing that is actually important is Nickelodeon is screwing over actual creators like the creators of Harvey Beaks. I think the lack of a diversity of content does ultimately have a effect on the creatives behind the industry:

Nickelodeon Forced 'Harvey Beaks' Creator C. H. Greenblatt To Apologize on Cartoon Brew

Nickelodeon has a "terrible record" of handling ideas and shows, says the creator of "Harvey Beaks."

www.cartoonbrew.com

 

[Fone Bone]

I think you are not getting my point.

I am not getting mad at some kids network that no caters to my tastes as an adult. I don't have nostalgia for Nickelodeon, I grew up in Canada and Nickelodeon content was filtered through local networks.

I do think one can argue they do not have the diversity of content they once had, which is ultimately there business. However, the thing that is actually important is Nickelodeon is screwing over actual creators like the creators of Harvey Beaks. I think the lack of a diversity of content does ultimately have a effect on the creatives behind the industry:

Nickelodeon Forced 'Harvey Beaks' Creator C. H. Greenblatt To Apologize on Cartoon Brew

Nickelodeon has a "terrible record" of handling ideas and shows, says the creator of "Harvey Beaks."

www.cartoonbrew.com

I get your point. I just don't agree with it.

I guess my problem with the thread is the framing. The poster is invited to say when they believed Nickelodeon declined. People who currently like the network are automatically declared wrong. Of COURSE, Nickelodeon has declined. Who could disagree?

It's ironic my second post in the thread shut down the discussion a bit. I admit I tend to be too negative. But I like to think I come by my grumpiness honestly, and am willing to have a dialogue about cartoons, good and bad. I feel like the question posed by the thread title is about as fair as "When did you stop beating your wife?" Of course what you posted doesn't have the malice behind that other question but it's a negative frame searching to be reinforced rather than debated.

Also should point out that threads like this are made CONSTANTLY, so I'm not singling you our by a longshot. It's just I feel like people have stopped trying to come up with new things to talk about on the site and just repeat previous threads over and over. I personally don't create a ton of non-talkback threads, but I put in a lot of work whenever I do it. I'm wondering if the board would benefit me doing that more often. Maybe some essays would be helpful. I could probably work something up.

 

[Goldstar!]

For anyone who says that Nickelodeon was better 15-20 years ago, I would suggest that you re-wstch some of those older Nick shows and see how many of them hold up. I',m not saying that all of them were bad, but all of them weren't good either.

And the premise of creators getting screwed over and original ideas being passed over in favor of nostalgic IPs is a problem, sure, but it's not exclusively a Nickelodeon problem. It's happening everywhere. Paramount, Warner Brothers, Disney, Netflix, everywhere.

 

[Fone Bone]

For anyone who says that Nickelodeon was better 15-20 years ago, I would suggest that you re-wstch some of those older Nick shows and see how many of them hold up. I',m not saying that all of them were bad, but all of them weren't good either.

For the most part, Nick's sitcoms have been atrocious throughout every decade. I refuse to entertain the notion of a decline for Nickelodeon because on some level it has always sucked.

Also, let's remember that Nickelodeon's success is not dependent on pleasing longtime fans. The network would go under if they did that. It's about pleasing kids. Do I love the spamming of SpongeBob? No, but I'm an adult and it's what the kids apparently watch. I think the variety and experimental animation we got out of the 1990's was an outlier. If Nick had known they could fill the entire schedule with one show and kids would still watch, that would have happened then too. We and the animation industry are very fortunate spamming had yet to be discovered. If it HAD been decades early, the entire landscape would be different.

You want to claim when you were a kid you had enough good taste not to have been into spamming if it had happened? I don't believe you. It happens because it gets ratings. Which means it would have back with us too. If Nickelodeon was nonstop Ren And Stimpy in the 1990's I would have wound up watching it more back then than I did. And I was an adult!

 

[The Overlord]

I get your point. I just don't agree with it.

I guess my problem with the thread is the framing. The poster is invited to say when they believed Nickelodeon declined. People who currently like the network are automatically declared wrong. Of COURSE, Nickelodeon has declined. Who could disagree?

It's ironic my second post in the thread shut down the discussion a bit. I admit I tend to be too negative. But I like to think I come by my grumpiness honestly, and am willing to have a dialogue about cartoons, good and bad. I feel like the question posed by the thread title is about as fair as "When did you stop beating your wife?" Of course what you posted doesn't have the malice behind that other question but it's a negative frame searching to be reinforced rather than debated.

Also should point out that threads like this are made CONSTANTLY, so I'm not singling you our by a longshot. It's just I feel like people have stopped trying to come up with new things to talk about on the site and just repeat previous threads over and over. I personally don't create a ton of non-talkback threads, but I put in a lot of work whenever I do it. I'm wondering if the board would benefit me doing that more often. Maybe some essays would be helpful. I could probably work something up.

Fair enough, I do think these threads pop up a lot because a lack of diverse content means there is far less to talk about with this network then other animation outlets.

I also think Nickelodeon is just as capable of slimy business practices that screwing over creatives over as any entertainment company and frankly I think trying to sugar coat these practices because they are beloved children TV network is not something I would agree with.

Also I have seen articles about heads of Paramount saying the lack of content at Nickelodeon makes it a less valuable, unfortunately I saw that article a couple of years ago and I can't find it, but I think even the heads of Paramount realize that they let this network go to pot. Frankly Paramount has allowed several of its networks to go to pot. MTV spams the same show over and over again and Comedy Central airs reruns of the Office and Seinfeld

I don't agree with the idea that nostalgia adults are trying to ruin a network aimed kids by making it reflect their tastes, because kids do not care about Nickelodeon that much anymore:

A New Report Confirms It: Your Kids Have Pretty Much Stopped Watching Linear TV

A MoffettNathanson report found time spent viewing kids' programming on linear TV collapsed by 53 percent from 2019 to 2021.

www.indiewire.com

It's a kids network that increasingly fails to connect with kids.

I am not approaching this as a nostalgic adult as I am someone who likes to talk the inner workings of the entertainment industry in general and the animation industry in particular. I think the corporate mismanagement of Paramount Global makes this an evergreen topic.

The various Hollywood industry podcasts I listen to state that cable channels like Nickelodeon, MTV and Comedy Central are milestones around Paramount's neck at this point.

 

[Fone Bone]

I am not approaching this as a nostalgic adult as I am someone who likes to talk the inner workings of the entertainment industry in general and the animation industry in particular. I think the corporate mismanagement of Paramount Global makes this an evergreen topic.

We used to talk about the cartoons themselves. I miss that. If I wanted business news I'd read The Wall Street Journal. Toon Zone has lost its way.

 

[Light Lucario]

It didn't decline. You just outgrew it.

While I think that there is some truth to that, I also don't think that's entirely the case. I've been seeing this topic of Nickelodeon being downhill for over a decade at this point and I don't see it being brought up as frequently compared to other channels like Cartoon Network and Disney Channel. That isn't to say that those channels don't have their fair share of issues or that people don't argue over their quality over the years. I just don't see people argue when their decline happened nearly as much as I have with Nickelodeon, so I have a hard time believing that it's only a matter of people outgrowing Nickelodeon.

I get your point. I just don't agree with it.

I guess my problem with the thread is the framing. The poster is invited to say when they believed Nickelodeon declined. People who currently like the network are automatically declared wrong. Of COURSE, Nickelodeon has declined. Who could disagree?

It's ironic my second post in the thread shut down the discussion a bit. I admit I tend to be too negative. But I like to think I come by my grumpiness honestly, and am willing to have a dialogue about cartoons, good and bad. I feel like the question posed by the thread title is about as fair as "When did you stop beating your wife?" Of course what you posted doesn't have the malice behind that other question but it's a negative frame searching to be reinforced rather than debated.

I think that might be reading a bit too much into the premise of the thread. I don't think it automatically makes people who like Nickelodeon wrong. Admittedly, I'm not sure how many people, especially on this site, would like how the network is at the moment. The schedule is pretty bad and they aren't willing to do much with most of their new shows, both of which has been the case for quite some time. Nickelodeon is pretty infamous for dumping their shows onto Nicktoons and even recently put an entire new series on Prime Video with no promotion or fanfare. But just because I think that the channel has been weak for a long time doesn't mean that people who do currently like it are wrong. It means that people have different opinions.

And comparing the thread's title to spousal abuse is really ridiculous. Abuse is objectively terrible, while discussing the quality of a network, whether or not you think it has gone downhill, is more subjective. I don't think that the negative framing of the question necessarily means that they want their opinion to be reinforced rather than debated too. People can easily come in and say that Nickelodeon hasn't gone downhill much like you have.

 

[The Overlord]

We used to talk about the cartoons themselves. I miss that. If I wanted business news I'd read The Wall Street Journal. Toon Zone has lost its way.

Eh, I like insider baseball stuff, hence my listening to Hollywood industry podcasts. Sometimes you have to see how the sausage is made to understand how animation will progress in the future.

A failure to innovate is what made Paramount desperate to sell itself and put Nickelodeon in an tough spot.

I just think saying I am blinded by nostalgia misidentified my point.

For anyone who says that Nickelodeon was better 15-20 years ago, I would suggest that you re-wstch some of those older Nick shows and see how many of them hold up. I',m not saying that all of them were bad, but all of them weren't good either.

And the premise of creators getting screwed over and original ideas being passed over in favor of nostalgic IPs is a problem, sure, but it's not exclusively a Nickelodeon problem. It's happening everywhere. Paramount, Warner Brothers, Disney, Netflix, everywhere.

Except as Light noted, this type of thread appears more often with Nickelodeon than Disney or Cartoon Network and I don't think mere nostalgia glasses are the cause of this.

Frankly I think they have been the canary in the coal mine when it comes to these bad corporate trends and I think chalking up this criticism to mere nostalgia obscures the corporate mismanagement Paramount has done.

I am not a fool, I don't except a kids network to cater to my tastes, especially since my tastes are darker than many people here. I have plenty of good adult animation to entertain me and if I wanted to watch an old Nicktoons, I can do that, I don't need Nickelodeon to reflect my tastes.

But I still contend that Nickelodeon lacks innovation that could appeal to kids today, I think it did have more room for creative freedom in the past than it does now. Perhaps that is more a nostalgia for a creative environment rather than a nostalgia for a particular show. Rather than wanting Hey Arnold or Avatar to come back, I see a nostalgia for the creative space that birthed these shows.

I don't think nostalgic adults are ruining Nick for the kids, because even the kids are moving on from Nickelodeon:

A New Report Confirms It: Your Kids Have Pretty Much Stopped Watching Linear TV

A MoffettNathanson report found time spent viewing kids' programming on linear TV collapsed by 53 percent from 2019 to 2021.

www.indiewire.com

 

[Goldstar!]

For the most part, Nick's sitcoms have been atrocious throughout every decade. I refuse to entertain the notion of a decline for Nickelodeon because on some level it has always sucked

I was mainly thinking about Nickelodeon's animated shows. After Turkey Television, I didn't watch any of the live action Nick shows ritually.

 

[Francisque]

It didn't decline. You just outgrew it.

This, plus it was inevitable due to the competition from Disney Channel (especially)

I add: now obviously we have a romanticised vision of the "past" including Nickelodeon but you know why? Only because everything's more easily accessible (including a lot of older content) outside of the TV, which inevitably kills linear television

For anyone who says that Nickelodeon was better 15-20 years ago, I would suggest that you re-wstch some of those older Nick shows and see how many of them hold up. I',m not saying that all of them were bad, but all of them weren't good either.

And the premise of creators getting screwed over and original ideas being passed over in favor of nostalgic IPs is a problem, sure, but it's not exclusively a Nickelodeon problem. It's happening everywhere. Paramount, Warner Brothers, Disney, Netflix, everywhere.

There was so much "garbage" and mediocrity on Nickelodeon as any other channel, and you didn't have much choice

I look back to some of the older content and a I see a lot of overused plots (e.g. like school life, especially on Disney) and things that just feel tired in general

Not saying everything's better now

 

[ToonsJazzLover]

The Cyma Zarghami era was just a bunch of questionable decisions.

Obviously, I was no longer in the target demo throughout the era (after 2009), but it stands out how embarrassingly bad some of their shows were.

 

[CNNickFan]

Eh, if we're talking from a creative, scheduling, and general inclusivity standpoint with their demographic, as well as ratings, 2004 was their peak year.

The years after it were also very good, I'd say many kids started to lose interest in Nick around 2015. The care from executives clearly wasn't there anymore, and Zarghami's main goal was to talk down to kids like they're stupid rather than relate to them (judging from the testimonies of former employees).

If we're talking viewer standpoint, I agree with Fone Bone, that's completely subjective.

 

[toonatic#_#]

I think that Nick (and most TV channels) started to decline in quality when streaming services really became the main ways to watch TV. Not that that's inherently bad of course, that's just how history is.

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[ATSFGuy]

I think that Nick (and most TV channels) started to decline in quality when streaming services really became the main ways to watch TV. Not that that's inherently bad of course, that's just how history is.

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Nickelodeon started it's slow and painful decline shortly after the rebrand on September 28, 2009, when the ionic "Splat" logo was taken away and became the boring simple "nickelodeon".

Personally, here is where many longtime fans (including myself) feel this was a major turning point for the channel.

 

[toonatic#_#]

Nickelodeon started it's slow and painful decline shortly after the rebrand on September 28, 2009, when the ionic "Splat" logo was taken away and became the boring simple "nickelodeon".

Personally, here is where many longtime fans (including myself) feel this was a major turning point for the channel.

I also think that was an indicator that things were slowly going downhill as well, along with more Nicktoons getting shelved to Nicktoons Network

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[ATSFGuy]

I also think that was an indicator that things were slowly going downhill as well, along with more Nicktoons getting shelved to Nicktoons Network

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Plus cheap 3rd party acquisitions became a lot more common instead of them making new shows....

 

[toonatic#_#]

Plus cheap 3rd party acquisitions became a lot more common instead of them making new shows....

Honestly, I think even then Nicktoons Network had more faith in its channel than now. Say what you will about NFL Rush Zone or Wild Grinders or any of the Nicktoons exclusives, but at least they could be an incentive for people to buy the more expensive cable packages to get the channel. What's the point to Nicktoons now? That you can watch SpongeBob at 3 am (Oh boy, 3 am!)? Then just get Paramount Plus.

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[CNNickFan]

Nickelodeon started it's slow and painful decline shortly after the rebrand on September 28, 2009, when the ionic "Splat" logo was taken away and became the boring simple "nickelodeon".

Personally, here is where many longtime fans (including myself) feel this was a major turning point for the channel.

Nah, I disagree with this. It's not like the channel magically became bad on September 28th; there was just different branding, with a rather unfavorable logo, but that's not the worst thing ever.

No show was removed from the channel permanently on September 27th or 28th (I don't think), so shows like Chalkzone, Danny Phantom, Jimmy Neutron, and AGU stayed on the channel for a few more weeks (years for the last two).

If you're really not a big fan of the rebrand, try to look at the bigger picture. Nickelodeon had started that "decline" people associate with the rebrand as far back as late 2007, imo. Everything became stale, saturated, and oversimplified in my opinion, and the shows really weren't making it any better.

I also think that was an indicator that things were slowly going downhill as well, along with more Nicktoons getting shelved to Nicktoons Network

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Yeah, idk about this either. True, more shows were getting shelved, but I feel like while they were on the main network, they were able to sustain limelight (Mighty B, Penguins, Barnyard, TUFF).

Plus cheap 3rd party acquisitions became a lot more common instead of them making new shows....

Eh, acquisitions aren't bad. Especially considering the time when Viacom was in a major financial rut, the most likely couldn't find all those new shows at once, one of the reasons of the great late 2000's purge, where a crap ton of shows got cancelled at once.