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Children's BBC/CBBC on Nickelodeon (1996-99)

(April 2020)

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AN
Anglialad
Whataday posted:
DJ Dave posted:
Whataday posted:
The CITV channel was initially going to be a joint venture with Nickelodeon called INK (ITV Nickelodeon Kids) with the two companies sharing programming, but ITV eventually decided it would be sustainable to go it alone (having previously ruled it out due to the already saturated market).


Forgot all about that idea, I do think would a CiTV Channel have been better if it launched in the 1998+ era of CiTV with Stephen and Danielle etc.


Considering Carlton launched Carlton Kids in 1998, I wonder if they were unable to launch a CITV channel as they couldn't run an ITV branded channel on their own.

Good point
DJ
DJ Dave
Neil Jones posted:
2001 was the striped era. A scheduling technique introduced by Janie Grace who came from Nickelodeon who had been doing it for ages. It worked for Nick, it could work for CITV.

Problem: Nickelodeon airs many US shows. Which are typically anywhere up to 26 episodes a season so you can run it weekdays for (say) just over five weeks. CITV shows were often 13 (some were less). So you burnt through shows like there was no tomorrow.

Can't be sure how long that lasted for, think it was meant to be a year long experiment but I'm sure it didn't last that long, seem to recall 4 months? If that? Then they went back to the "normal" way of doing things.


I'm guessing that was when they started showing the same shows everyday all week to try and copy Nick and Disney etc? Yeah I don't think it lasted all year, maybe about 3 months.
WH
Whataday Founding member
One of the Carlton Kids presenters was a certain Angellica Bell who was very quickly snapped up by CBBC.
JV
James Vertigan Founding member
Neil Jones posted:
Surprising to think Rugrats lasted as long as it did, it was created alongside Doug and Ren & Stimpy but outlived both of those shows by some considerable degree, and got its own spin-off in the process.


Nickelodeon’s Doug was originally commissioned as a 65-episode run, but in the end Nickelodeon only paid for 52 episodes. ABC had shown interest in taking up the show and in 1996 when Disney purchased ABC they also purchased Doug, renaming it Brand Spanking New! Doug and later Disney’s Doug , but by the time Disney acquired the show, creative changes had been made, notably Billy West, who voiced Doug in the Nickelodeon series, had moved on to other projects.
AA
Amber Avenger
It wasn't particularly that Billy West had moved on, voice artists tend to work on plenty of projects at once, but more that they couldn't afford him. The production team did fight to keep him on but his stock had risen considerably with Ren and Stimpy in particular over the course of the original Nick series of Doug. In the end it was the budget of the show that made them reluctant to pick up the remaining episodes.

Funnily enough was reading about this just the other week as Doug popped up on Disney +, and I watched some out of curiosity. It did certainly lack the charm of the original run
WH
Whataday Founding member
I seem to remember the relationship between the producers of The Ren & Stimpy Show and Nickelodeon wasn't great.

Rugrats was just a runaway success which made them a fortune. It had more mainstream appeal.
JA
james-2001
I never particularly liked Doug. It wasn't bad, as such, it was just... bland. A nothing really happens show.
GB
Gary Baldy
james-2001 posted:
I never particularly liked Doug. It wasn't bad, as such, it was just... bland. A nothing really happens show.

The Nickelodeon version was great, but the Disney version less so.
AA
Amber Avenger
Whataday posted:
I seem to remember the relationship between the producers of The Ren & Stimpy Show and Nickelodeon wasn't great.

Rugrats was just a runaway success which made them a fortune. It had more mainstream appeal.


I think it's easy to underestimate the overall impact of Ren & Stimpy from the UK, where it didn't really gain a huge amount of traction, but it was by far Nickelodeon's most popular show in the early seasons in the US and the most popular show on cable for a time.
RO
robertclark125
Ah Ren and Stimpy!! I remember in the mid 90s when it was aired on a Thursday evening slot on bbc2, circa 19:00
NW
nwtv2003
robertclark125 posted:
Ah Ren and Stimpy!! I remember in the mid 90s when it was aired on a Thursday evening slot on bbc2, circa 19:00


It wasn’t uncommon for Ren and Stimpy to be broadcast after midnight if memory serves, in the same slot the BBC gave Seinfeld.

Going back to Doug, it was the only Nicktoon which was transmitted by TV-am before transferring to Channel 4, along with Saved by the Bell (obviously not Nickelodeon).
WH
Whataday Founding member
nwtv2003 posted:
Going back to Doug, it was the only Nicktoon which was transmitted by TV-am before transferring to Channel 4, along with Saved by the Bell (obviously not Nickelodeon).


There's a few things that link Nickelodeon to TV-am. Firstly, Nickelodeon UK's first director of programmes was James Baker who joined from TV-am where he'd spend most of his career in their kids department. Secondly, 50% of Nickelodeon UK was owned by Sky which of course had its own content arrangement with TV-am in its last year. And obviously Hawley Crescent ended up as the base of Nick UK.

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