I recently stumbled across a documentary on HULU called The Orange Years about the rise and early years of Nickelodeon. The documentary starts at the beginning with QUBE which was an early type of cable television that originated in 1977 in Columbus, Ohio. One of QUBE's shows was Pinwheel which was hugely popular. In 1979 Nickelodeon was launched and the first show that aired was Pinwheel. What I didn't know what that until 1984 the network aired commercial free.
The documentary introduces us to Geraldine Laybourne, who became the program manager of Nickelodeon in 1980 and over the next 15 years she and her team built the channel to what it would become.
I first saw Nickelodeon as a kid at my step-grandmothers house as she had satellite dish. I fondly remember the old silver ball and multicolored logo.
I loved learning about my favorite shows and the interviews with some of the cast members seeing what they look like today. My first favorite show on Nick was You Can't Do That On Television. I loved the skits, Opposites, Firing Squad, the Locker bits, of course watching people getting slimed. Watching this documentary made me want to dig into more about this show and I discovered a documentary came out in 2004 called You Can't Do That On Film, I'll be looking for that.
Other shows they talked about that I remember fondly include, Hey Dude, Double Dare, Nick Arcade, Salute Your Shorts, Legends of the Hidden Temple and more. It was really fascinating learning about the back stories of the creations of these shows.
They also talked about Nick Toons with Doug, Ren & Stimpy, and Rugrats. Then about SNICK: Saturday Night Nickelodeon, which launch in 1992 when I was 13 and that first line up of Clarissa Explains It All, Roundhouse, and Are You Afraid of the Dark? really his home with me at that time. I also loved the additions of The Adventures of Pete & Pete and All That.
After that, though, I was getting too old for Nickelodeon and this is when parts of the documentary, although interesting, didn't give me the same feeling the early parts of it did.
There was a couple shows that they didn't mention at all that really surprised me. The first being Wild and Crazy Kids. It was on from 1990 - 1992 with 75 episodes and I loved this show. They aired reruns of it all the time during this initial run and after. Kids divided in teams playing stunt games against each other. It was great!
Fifteen was a teen drama that came out in 1991 and ran for four seasons totaling 65 episodes. I remember watching and thinking it was a more serious take on Saved By The Bell. I wasn't aware of Degrassi until much later in life.
Another was What Would You Do? hosted by Marc Summers it was an audience participation show getting them to do various stunts or competitions with each other. They also threw a lot of pies in people's faces and had contraptions Pie Pod, Pie Slide, Pie Roulette, and more to assist in guests getting pied.
They didn't touch on Nick at Nite at all. When Nick launched in 1979 it was not a 24 hour network for kids. As a matter of fact it had programming on from 8am to 11pm on Weekdays and 8am to midnight on weekends. The other hours on the day featured from Star Channel which later became The Movie Channel.
In 1981 it changed to 13 hours of daily kids programming from 8am to 9pm seven days a week with the Alpha Repertory Television Service (ARTS) airing programming on the other 11 hours. ARTS later merged with The Entertainment Channel becoming what we now know today as A&E. In January 1985 A&E ended it's partnership with Nick and launched it's own 24 hour cable channel.
From January until July 1, 1985 Nick aired text commercials advertising their daytime line up. I really can't believe this valuable airtime essentially went unused for six months. Some cable markets did fill this block of time with channels that they didn't space on their system to have a full channel of.
Nickelodeon turned to Laybourne to help make Nick it's own 24 hour channel and with the help of others they launched Nick at Nite on July 1, 1985 which aired from 8pm to 6am. The original line up featured Dennis The Menace, The Donna Reed Show, Lassie, National Geographic Explorer, My Three Sons, Route 66, Turkey Television, and the Nick At Nite Movie airing at 9pm nightly.
Some of my favorite shows that I remember watching on Nick At Nite include, Adventures of Superman, Patty Duke, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Adventures of Dobie Gillis, and Mr. Ed.
What's hilarious to me is that Nickelodeon has been on for so long that some of their own original programming in recent years have aired on the Nick at Nite rotation like Are You Afraid of the Dark?.
I haven't had cable since 20102 and I haven't watched Nickelodeon or Nick at Nite with any regularity since then. However this documentary and writing about Nick at Nite really makes me want to go back and watch some of this programming.
Until Next Time!
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