Life of the Modern Day Cartoon: the Nickelodeon Edition

Let’s throw some names out there: Rugrats, Doug, Ren and fucking Stimpy, Two Angry Beavers, Catdog, Ahh!!! Real Monsters, Rocko’s Modern Life. All of these shows aired on one network that used to be known for the pinnacle of children’s and young adult cartoons. This network was known as Nickelodeon.

In addition to those cartoons, Nickelodeon was once home to other badass shows like Nick Arcade, GUTS, Legends of the Hidden Temple (which still has such a huge following, they started selling the team shirts), Double Dare, and I may be dating myself with this one, but who remembers Eureka’s Castle? There was a time where most kids that had cable at the time would only watch Nick.

Then they got a need in competition from Warner Bros, called Cartoon Network. Yeah, that clusterfuck. When CN started airing more original programming, You saw the difference in creativity between CN and Nick. Nick needed to come back hard, and it did. Spongebob was a hit with all ages, Fairly Odd Parents was also. But when people are watching Jonny Bravo, and the Powerpuff Girls, You can see that Nick wasn’t doing enough.

Then you get a stretch of shows that only showed up for a season. Anyone remember As Told By Ginger? How about The Angry B? Does My Life as a Teenage Robot or Catscratch, or El Tigre ring a bell? I didn’t think so, because there was nothing backing them, and barely anyone watching. The only one that was any good, and deserved a second run was Teenage Robot. The art direction and the writing was fun. When was the last time you saw art deco in a cartoon besides Batman?

Now a days, Nick is a cesspool of bullshit teenage girl shows like Victorious, iCarly, Big Time Rush, and whatever shows they can recycle the plots through different settings and people. Unfortunately, that’s not even the fucking worse. Look on your guide. How many hours of Spongebob runs concurrently? As of this writing, the rest of the day until Nick at Nite comes on is as follows: an hour of Fairly OddParents, two and a half hours of that fucking retarded yellow sponge, and then one episode of Drake and Josh. Fuck that show.

So, the prime time slot to get kids to watch all of your new shows is when? That’s right! Saturday morning! I’ll take a second for you to press your guide button, and look at Nick on Saturday mornings. From 7 until noon goes as follows: an hour of Fairly OddParents reruns, two hours of Spongebob reruns, and an hour of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reruns.  So…they wonder why no one fucking watches this channel anymore? You spent all that money to get the rights to air the new Power Rangers series on Nick. Why is it on in the barren waste of 1 in the afternoon? Get your fucking ass out of the dirt and fix this!God damn, you know if Cartoon Network can get something right, there’s a problem because if they do something better than you, you may want to shutter up, and close shop.

 

I know more people who watch the Nicktoons Network over Nick, because at least it has reruns of shows they enjoy. Want to watch Avatar:TLA? On Nicktoons. Want to watch Rocko’s Modern Life? Also, on Nicktoons? Want to watch Invader Zim? You guessed it, also on Nicktoons.

 

Whatever dumbass has control over programming at Nick, I am going to draw you a blueprint to a two-point system to drum up some success.:

 

1. Vary Your Repeats. Trust me. We know you have Spongebob, and we know you have Fairly OddParents. You have great shows like Doug, Ren and Stimpy, Rugrats, Rocko’s Modern Life, My Life as a Teenage Robot, Danny Phantom, Action League Now!, Avatar: The Last Airbender, The Legend of Korra, and any other of the Nicktoons that debuted over the years. USE THEM!

 

2. Re-think Your Acquisitions. Remember a little show, called Adventure Time? Yeah, that could have been on Nick. Can you see it now? Nick may have had a renaissance. But now we’re stuck in a glut of animation hell that is reruns of terrible Spongebob episodes. For the record, 8 hours throughout the day. I’m not saying…wait, yes I am. THIS IS FUCKING TERRIBLE!

 

Unfortunately, this seems like a lost cause. Bad reboots, short runs of the actual good shows, and terrible scheduling are going to doom this network. Don’t be surprised if Nickelodeon proper shutters up, and Nicktoons Network would take its place.

 

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