Because I have younger kids, I watch a lot of Nickelodeon. (I can’t seem to convince them that they should be watching the Disney Channel, but that’s another rant for another time.) At one time I really enjoyed watching it with them. They had a ton of good live action shows … “The Adventures of Pete and Pete”, “Salute Your Shorts” and so on. Even the game shows they had were pretty cool.
But nowadays it’s almost just all cartoons. NickToons. It’s like they suddenly decided the average intelligence of their viewers dropped from pre-teen to third grade level. It might not be so bad, but they’re the same cartoons over and over again. If I see “The Origin of Donnie” one more time I’m gonna hurl.
So, a once halfway intelligent children’s channel for me has gone completely downhill. Has it for you, too?
Nothing compares to the early to mid 90’s glory days of Pete & Pete, Rocko’s Modern Life, Clarissa Explains it All, Are You Afraid of the Dark, Roundhouse, the first couple seasons of All That, the original Nicktoons, and a bunch of others.
Horray for Salute your Shorts!!! “Ug” Lee was on a Voyager episode and a capital one commercial, Donkey Lips was on Friends, and Budnick was a voice on Tiny Toons! I loved that show!
You’re damn right! Nick Arcade, Wild and Crazy Kids, Double Dare, What Would You Do, Picture This…. Great shows. All original, and really fun to watch when you’re a kid. I really can’t picture wanting to watch “Slime Time Live” or (I know I’m gonna meet some resistance on this one) “SpongeBobSquarePants”. There. I said it! That show is unbearable!:mad:
Pete and Pete! I lwatched this show as a kid, but only while looking back do I realize how odd and funny it really was. First of all, 2 brothers that were both named Pete because their parents just really liked the name? The younger Pete who had an unexplained tattoo of a woman in a red dress that he could make “dance” by moving his arm? A bully named Open-Face because he only ate open-faced sandwiches? And of course, Artie, the strongest man * the world!* And the plots were equally strange. The only one I can remember clearly is the one with the telephone that had been ringing for 20 years, and it turned out to be from the telephone guy that had a 20 year crush on the Petes’ mom. Now I’m getting all nostalgic…
Meet Pete.
Meet Pete’s Brother Pete.
Meet Pete’s Mom. She has a metal plate in her head. (Cut to Pete putting a post-it on Mom’s head.)
And meet Pete’s tattoo, Petunia. (cut to Pete’s arm. Obviously fake tattoo of a flamenco dancer)
Okay! Glad I got that out of my system! It’s funny, though, I don’t even remember some of the things I did yesterday, but I still remember most of the theme song.
The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Clarissa Explains it All, and Daria are all currently airing on the cable channel, Noggin. It is my dear hope that they get some other nick shows like **Salute Your Shorts, Rocko’s Modern life **<shakes fist at Nick> and 15. I watch that channel waaaaay too much for someone in their 20’s.
I just the other day saw Pete and Pete for the first time in years thanks to Noggin. I tell you, when I heard the theme song (Aiiiiiiii, aiiiiiiiiiiiii, aiiiiiiiiiiiii, let your dog bite…) I wept.
They are definately skewing towards a younger audience. Probably part of their larger strategy to have different channels for different age groups. Perhaps once they finally get a whole channel which they can specifically aim at teens and not worry about the younger demographics since to do so would compete with their sister channel shows like Invader Zim and Pete and Pete will find a home.
I wonder if Noggin is the channel they’re trying to turn into the teen channel. It’s a weird mixture, Pete and Pete and Clarissa mixed with old Seasame Streets and 3-2-1 Contacts as well as some silly (IMHO) teen soap operas like DeGrassi, which I’ve never actually seen but that’s what it comes across as.
Either way I hope they gain back some of their good humor, As the School Bus Turns although a blatant rip-off of Pete and Pete wa genuinely funny and interesting.
The quality of programming that was shown on Nickelodeon from the time of the networks inception through about 1994 or so was unequalled by any other channel. I remember cracking up at You Can’t Do That On Television with its witty satircal humor, watching all the aforementioned game shows that were creative beyond belief, and, later on in the networks history, seeing shows that dealt with real issues amongst children/teens. I distinctly remember reading an article about Nickelodeon a few years ago(wish I had a cite) that quoted the networks head-person-whatever as saying that they denied any programming that was designed to sell toys. That seems to have changed. Why, back in the late 1980s, Nickelodeon was so in-depth that an adult would be stimulated by much of its programming. Cutting myself off…