Silly Nickelodeon, tricks are for kids!

I hate, hate, hate Nickelodeon.

At my house, we like a dopey little cartoon called Chalk Zone. It’s not the greatest show ever made, but it’s silly and likable and has little songs at the end of it. (It also has some Freudian elements to it, but that’s another post.) It used to be easy to find on both CBS and Nickelodeon. But that was a while ago.

With its poor ratings, Chalk Zone was doomed at CBS. It left in September of last year. There were still showings on Nick’s popular weekend mornings, and new episodes on Fridays. But then the new episodes stopped abruptly, and in November, the morning reruns vanished too. Which was odd, because they were still listed in TV Guide.

Oh, well, TV Guide’s always been a bubble off plumb. I started checking various online listings, thinking they would be more up-to-date. They all listed Chalk Zone’s return. And every week, they were wrong. I switched to a Nickelodeon fanatic who was posting schedules he obtained direct from the station. All said Chalk Zone, 11:30 AM Central Saturdays and Sundays. And every Saturday and every Sunday, something else ran in its place. And never the same thing twice. One week, Jimmy Neutron, hello false values. Another week, My Life as a Teenage Robot, good, but not the Grail. Another, Rugrats All Grown Up, feh. Confusion reigned at my house. Where was Chalk Zone? And if it was gone, why couldn’t Nick decide on a replacement?

I had tried several times to go to Nickelodeon’s website to see what I could find out. Each time was a bust. Nick.com’s Java and Flash enhanced pages were too much for my vintage 1994 Compaq, still chugging lamely along on Windows 95. After the fan’s schedules failed, I gave up and started checking with my work computer on a lunch break. What do you know, Chalk Zone, 11:30 AM Central Saturdays and Sundays. What do you know, every Wednesday or Thursday, both showings preempted for marathons. That’s why no listing guide got it right. They were all being fed bad info. And it explained why Chalk Zone was never replaced by the same thing twice. Nick finally scheduled a Chalk Zone Saturday marathon a few weeks back, then changed the schedule again the following day. We’ve caught a Christmas special, and one regular episode the Sunday after New Years. Otherwise, Nick’s been stringing us on with lying schedules.

Of course, I could always complain. Nothing much to speak of, the sort of thing that’s glanced at and filed under T for Trash, just jot down a quick note about how we like Chalk Zone and would like to see it again, and could you please make your programming decisions more than a week in advance? And this is where the search gets really maddening. For there is no way to write to Nickelodeon via the Internet. At all. Go look at their website if your computer can handle the pulsing graphics. Flick through the animated icons. Play the 3-D games. Download SpongeBob’s theme song to your cellphone. Wonder how they did it without any e-mail. OK, I fib, they have one e-mail, the privacy one. They helpfully sent a snail mail address to me. I spent a day debating whether to send my note in via Mr Zip before deciding I was NOT spending 37 cents to have my well-reasoned complaint become one with New Jersey without being read. I’ll do that for free, but I ain’t paying for the privilege, thanks. The message boards and something called “Blab”, which seems to be a primitive e-mail to the Nick cheeses, are kids-only (of course, I’d let my children use this when I can’t contact anyone in charge if something goes wrong!) I tried contacting the board administrators, but they were unresponsive. I tried the board administrators at the Nick at Nite, and they were as puzzled as I. Nickelodeon simply does not want to talk to me.

I finally wrote to Frederator, the show that actually makes Chalk Zone, and they offered a possible answer. The show is dead at forty episodes, a number of which haven’t been shown yet. These will premiere in mid-May when the show is stripped for weekday showings. And that sounded good, until I relayed this to Nickelodeon fans and they recited the lesser shows that still have lost episodes years after they vanished - Hey Arnold!, CatDog, As Told By Ginger. The Arnold fans are still peeved about a two-year-old incident in which a much-promoted Arnold premiere suffered a switcheroo with a Rugrats rerun; this episode has still never been seen anywhere. All agree that the chances of all forty episodes appearing on Nick are slim to none, and given Nick’s scattershot scheduling, even the weekday strip is up in the air.

So one of our favorite shows isn’t just gone. It’s become a mirage. We can see it from a far distance, but it fades before we get there. Today is Monday. Check the schedule, it’s there now. I guarantee you it will be gone by Wednesday afternoon at the latest, and if it isn’t, I will come to your house and eat dog biscuits. And does Nick care? Nope. Not a whit.

But they should.

Bad news for you, Nickelodeon. Today we got our Nielsen diaries. For a week our household is part of Sweeps in America. And there will be no watching Nickelodeon as a result. No SpongeBob reruns. No Odd Parents on the fly. No Teenage Robot - that may go down in a lump, but down it will go. It’s a small number out of hundreds, but it’s on your record. You could have given us back our show, and we’d be happy. You could have cancelled it and wiped it from the schedule, and we’d have been unhappy, but we’d have understood. But you played games and ignored us. And now, we are made of rage. Consider yourselves…erased.

Write down nothing but Cartoon Network shows. Make it sting more.

I’m still pissed off about the Invader Zim debacle. Very similar situation - kept seeing it in the TV guide, on the cable guide, on Nick’s website. Tuned in at the right times and saw something that wasn’t Invader Zim, dammit.

And while we’re at it, I want AHHHHH! Real Monsters back, too.

I think I’ve caught it on Nogin. Great show. Ickus rules.

As Told by Ginger, gone? Damnit. It was no Doug (the originals), but it had heart.

**LifeOnWry **hit it right on the head. My daughter and I went through the exact same scenario with Invader Zim including the cancelled marathons, schedule changes, disappearances, etc.

We’ve since bought the DVDs - waiting for the last one that comes with the box, to complete the box set - but Nickelodeon managed to screw that up, too. Some of the episodes were considered too edgy for Nick, so they had them edited for broadcast in the US. The box set was supposed to present the unedited, original eps, but no, they’ve only included the broadcast versions. Bastards.
If you get Nicktoons, you can get fixes of Angry Beavers and AHHHHHHH! Real Monsters.

Dayum! This is not a jibe, not an insult, not a rant, but I honestly had no idea people got this worked up over cartoons. I guess if I equate this with ESPN banishing football, baseball and basketball in favor of minor league tic-tac-toe tournies - maybe I could draw a parallel. A true YMMV, I suppose.

What is this “ESPN”? Some sort of sports channel?

Cartoons is the shizz. Everything else is noise.

I think I’ll vow to give up SpongeBob in support of don jaime’s Chalkzone-inspired boycott. Except someone might think I’m protesting because of… you, know… the gay thing. Damned if I do, damned if I don’t, I guess.

We’re glad to have you, h.sapiens.

LifeOnWry is indeed spot-on correct; it’s the ZIM debacle all over again. You’d think they’d have learned not to do that a second time. I’m wondering how Nick programmers keep their jobs.

Not an option. Cartoon Network banished Bugs Bunny and pals to one of those obscure channels you need a converter and a spare Benjamin per month to see, and now runs the terrible Ed, Edd, and Eddy and Kids Next Door almost non-stop instead. I’m not trying to encourage more of that. They’ll get their due for Foster’s Home for Imaginary Friends but that’s about it. At least they’ve been up front about moving Bugs to his own channel, and there’s tons of old tapes and regular new DVDs. Not so with Nick.

I understand Chalk Zone is available on that Nicktoons channel where the Real Monsters went. Again, I’m not made of money, but it’d be great to have those back and Rocko’s Modern Life too.

I’m assuming ESPN is some sort of Disney channel you need the expensive box for. I know I’ve never seen it.

I don’t have much to contribute, but I feel your pain, dude. When it comes to cartoons, and especially with Nickelodeon’s scheduling.

And gads, I hate it when cartoons gets preempted. Especially when it’s some enjoyable, quality show getting dumped for some cookie-cutter flavor of the month crap with the only things going for it are that it’s cheap and doesn’t make parents protest it. sigh