Thread 150026646

They were on top of the world in the 90s and early-to-mid 2000s. What happened?

>>150026646 (OP)
there's no mystery to it. they just happened to ride a bubble when there was a large population of Millenial children and then they grew up and there weren't as many 6-12 year olds after that.

Cyma Zarghami, president of Nickelodeon (2006-2018)

>>150026646 (OP)
Failure to adapt. Nick struggled to adapt to the rise of on-demand media like YouTube, and they couldn't produce any suitable programming to tear attention spans away from video games and tablets. A death spiral of SpongeBob and Henry Danger reruns sealed their fate, and the pandemic buried it ten miles deep.

>>150026646 (OP)
Nickelodeon best years ended when the 2004 spongebob movie came about and its creator quit making spongebob later.

It's just cable dying. Fox News fell from 1.5 million viewers in 2010 to 3 million viewers in 2025, Food Network fell from 1 million viewers to 400,000 over the same period, and cartoon channels fell from 3 million viewers to 40,000.

>>150026818
>Fox News fell from 1.5 million viewers in 2010 to 3 million viewers in 2025

>>150026671
she looks like a thumb

>This Avatar show is very popular! should we make more shows like it?
Nah, it's MUCH cheaper to make live action sitcoms. Dan is a genius!

>>150027127
Sitcoms brought in numbers that cartoons wished they could achieve. Except when CN tried it.

>>150026646 (OP)
Unironically Spongebob killed them. They became too comfortable with its success and didn’t feel the need to try.

They paid the price for cancelling Invader Zim

>>150026671
>NickMom block (2012–2015)
hmmm

has the network suffered with the documentary about the perverted shit? i never actually saw it, i never found a non-paywalled version.

>>150026646 (OP)
Refusing to give sufficient credit to Spumco and other talent, largely out of pride and ideology.

>>150026646 (OP)
Disney showed that live action teenybopper shows drew in far better ratings. So they tried to do the same, with disastrous results.

>>150029712
>live action teenybopper shows
That was their main bread-and-butter since the beginning, but the Nicktoons and especially SpongeBob made them shift gears.

They paid the price for fucking over the creator of making fiends

>>150026646 (OP)
Viacom stopped giving a fuck about content and rested on their laurels while the top execs started playing the stock buyback game. Meaning each year the company had less money and smaller budgets, but on paper they were doing great and raking it all in. After 2008/2009 it was noticeable that they could not really support their channels any longer and they decided to just shift to binge format of their top shows all day and night.

MTV was also on top of the world and now it's just one show about one elderly skatebarder watching youtube videos.

>>150029712
I recall Nick trying to imitate everything Disney for a while there around 07-ish. They even imitated the tween music videos in the commercial breaks thing too. It was annoying.

My life as a teenage robot was their last good show

>>150026646 (OP)
>What happened?

They started to liscence out merch for sponge Bob and Dora and it made them more money than anyyhing before.

Flying to Florida became pretty expensive so they stopped shooting shows there. It just stopped being practical to fly people back and forth across the country

>>150026646 (OP)
Youtube, AI and India.

>>150026818
The only reason most cable users still have it is for live news and sports.

>>150026646 (OP)
>Cartoon Network
>Adventure Time, Regular Show, The Amazing World of Gumball, Steven Universe.
>And probably even The Powerpuff Girls, Samurai Jack, and Courage the Cowardly Dog,
>Was able to gain a legacy even after their show had ended.

>Nickelodeon
>Can't name a show that manage to still have a legacy
>Except for
>SpongeBob SquarePants, Avatar the Last Airbender, and Rugrats
>and maybe even The Fairly OddParents, The Loud House, Dora the Explorer, and Blues' Clues,
>but even those not named SpongeBob SquarePants struggle.

Why?

>>150031691
Shut up coomerfag

>>150026646 (OP)
Transition to Live Action soap opera shit like iCarly started it's downfall

>>150028354
And then the entire 30 year legacy of them got sullied when it turned out those shows were ran by creeps.
Cartoons bring in less ratings but you can't molest them.

>>150033264
>Adventure Time
>Steven Universe
>shows whose legacy are now "the reason why Cartoon Network and Western animation in general fell off"

>>150026646 (OP)
Why did they stop filming shows at Universal Orlando?

>>150026646 (OP)
Over-reliance on Spongebob and not having anything new that was a huge draw after atla/icarly. Nickelodeon used to be able to rival both CN and Disney on separate grounds with it's variety of live action and cartoons combined with it's zany kid-centric brand identity. It was doomed once it stopped being the most hip and cool while CN got new shows like AT/SU that blew up online and Disney retained it's same identity while also getting stuff like Gravity Falls.

>>150035059
> >shows whose legacy are now "the reason why Cartoon Network and Western animation in general fell off"
Only on /co/

Their live action stuff was lame after Dan Schnieder took control of it. Try comparing Are You Afraid of the Dark or Alex Mack to iCarly and Drake and Josh.
Their animated content post 2000-ish also took way less risks.
>>150028390
>>150028732
based

>>150034907
>iCarly
>soap opera

>>150026646 (OP)

They made a lot of odd changes in 2006 that just shifted the whole identity of the channel and how it worked
>Quit making game shows
>Lost Klasky Csupo who were making a lot of their animated content
>They mostly dropped the old Nicktoons format of making 65 syndicated episodes and replaying them while making new content. They were content to live off Fairly Oddparents and Spongebob eternally.
>Began to strongly imitate Disney Channel with lots of kid friendly music videos and relying on more live action sitcoms
>they mostly stopped bothering with acquired content and imports of teen shows. Which used to be about 1/3rd of their content
>Moved out of Universal and mostly stopped doing all of their commercial tie-ins like take over the school, slime time, and local level events

Kind of agreeing with >>150028390 >>150030780 and >>150031760 they got into a comfortable position and made enough money off Spongebob and Dora that they got lazy and basically quit putting any effort into what they were doing. They did not have to care about still trying to be the #1 kids network, they were making money without really competing.

>>150026646 (OP)
They made so much money successfully marketing to kids that the vultures soon crowded out the people who knew what they were doing

>>150026646 (OP)
They were not a unique thing. It was really every Viacom channel that stopped giving a fuck around 2007 or so. Their properties are basically the main force behind channel network decay, everyone else just followed their lead but Viacom channels were binging single shows all day and night about a decade before everyone else.

>MTV just quit bothering with music and moved over to stupid spoiled whore reality shows.
>VH1 even worse, they dropped 100% of every single thing they were about and turned into reality shows about has-been 80s celebrities and random 80s movies.
>Scifi Channel quietly cancelled almost all their shows, and removed all old rerun scifi shows and decided to just have Wrestling and cheap horror movies 24/7
>CMT just rerun Everybody Loves Raymond all day long, just not even bothering with their whole theme any longer

>>150026646 (OP)
Most Nicktoons ran for at least 52 episodes back then, now anything that isn't Spongebob or Loud House dies with 13 episodes or 20 at best

>>150026646 (OP)
https://youtu.be/W23LKD9Z1hw?feature=shared&t=3

>>150026646 (OP)
SpongeBob happened.

>>150036495
The Dan Schnieder scandal was a blessing in disguise, now Nickelodeon is focusing more on animated properties

>>150043400
Why bother focusing on animated properties if Nick autistically cancels an animated series if it doesn't do Spongebob numbers?

>>150029730
and nobody gave a shit about Nick until about 1997-98 when the Nicktoons era began.

>>150026671
you joke but the only reason Nick had cartoons at all is because of Geraldine Laybourne, who was president of Nick from 1984 to 1996. and the style of nicktoons comes from Vanessa Coffey who was their chief producer and had final say on what pitches got greenlit.

>>150043967
Most of their 90s live-action shows were wacky and/or fantastical enough that the only difference was no animation.