Nickelodeon (often shortened to Nick) is an American basic cable and satellite television network launched on December 1, 1977, and is owned by Viacom through Viacom Media Networks and based in New York City. It is primarily aimed at children and adolescents aged 6–11 while its weekday morning edutainment programs are targeted at younger children ages 2–5.
As of January 2016, the channel is available to about 92.056 million households (79.086% of households with TV) in America.
History[]
The name of the channel comes from the first five cent movie theaters called nickelodeons. Nickelodeon's history dates back to December 1, 1977, when Warner Cable Communications launched the first two-way interactive cable system, QUBE, in Columbus, Ohio. Under the name Pinwheel Network, the C-3 cable channel carried Pinwheel daily from 7:00 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. Eastern Time. Nickelodeon launched on April 1, 1979, initially distributed to Warner Cable systems via satellite on the RCA Satcom-1 transponder. Originally commercial-free, advertising was introduced in January 1984.
Nicktoons[]
Nicktoons is the branding for Nickelodeon's original animated television series (although it has seldom been used by the network itself since the 2002 launch of the spin-off digital cable and satellite channel of the same name). Until 1991, the animated series that aired on Nickelodeon were largely imported from foreign countries, and some original animated specials were also featured on the channel up to that point. Original animated series continue to make up a substantial portion of Nickelodeon's lineup, with roughly 6 to 7 hours of these programs airing on the weekday schedule and around nine hours on weekends, including a five-hour weekend morning animation block. Since the late 2000s, after the channel struck a deal with DreamWorks Animation in 2006 to develop the studio's animated films into weekly series, the network has also begun to incorporate Nicktoons that utilize three-dimensional computer animation (such as The Penguins of Madagascar, Fanboy & Chum Chum, and Winx Club) in addition to those that are produced through traditional or digital ink and paint.