Nickelodeon:The Best of Slimes

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1:53Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, and that makes this a good old-fashioned Stuff You Should Know edition. That's right. And unfortunately, we have to issue a COA for this one. Oh, yeah. And it is pretty unfortunate for sure. Yeah, I mean, you see the title Nickelodeon, and you think just a rip-worn good time and nostalgia fest, and it is that, but we kind of tell the whole story of Nickelodeon, which very sadly includes some sexual abuse.

2:24And so, trigger warning for people in general and definitely for parents listening with kids. There you go. Well done. We should just edit that as a clip, and any time we have a COA, just pop that in. Yeah, great. All right, so let's get to the fun nostalgia part first, at least, right? Yeah, for sure. So, Nickelodeon was probably a little after your wheelhouse, right? Were you always a little too old for Nickelodeon, or was there ever a Venn diagram with you and Nickelodeon and happiness in the middle?

2:57There's a brief time of a little bit of Nickelodeon stuff for me, but I was just on the edge of being a little too old. But some of the stuff, like, I definitely remember You Can't Do That on Television and a little bit of Double Dare. Yeah. But, yeah, I mean, this was right in the middle of your wheelhouse, though, I bet. I watched this all the time. Yeah, that's great. I watched Pinwheel. I watched, like you said, They Can't Do That. You Can't Do That on Television, Double Dare.

3:27What else did I watch? Danger Mouse, Inspector Gadget. Oh, wow. You're all over it. I mean, just basically anything they would put on. Today's special. I was huge into today's special. Anything they would put on, I would definitely watch, and I loved it. All. I love it. Well, this one's for you, baby. Thanks a lot, man.

Warner Cable and the Origins in Ohio

3:47One thing I did not realize, though, is that Nickelodeon started in my home state of Ohio. And I don't know if you've noticed or not, but I'm pretty selective about when I claim Ohio is my home state. Sure. And I know you love to rub it in that you're an Atlanta native, and it's just, you know, I'm a newbie, a carpetbagger. But at any rate, that's where Nickelodeon started, actually, in Columbus, Ohio, as part of, like, this test that Warner Cable did. Pretty forward-thinking test in 1977 where they're like, hey, you know how everybody watches TV with antennas?

4:23We're going to launch the first cable network in the United States, if not the world. Yeah, it was called Warner Cable. They opened that studio in Columbus, like you said, and they had 30 channels at first. I guess you pronounce it Cube, huh? Yeah, that's what I'm going with. Q-U-B-E. And you could pay 10 bucks a month, and, you know, depending on what you were into, you could get shows like Flippo's Magic Cars. They had an early show kind of preceded Star Search even, I think, called Talent Search.

4:55Yeah, and I was wondering if Star Search grew out of Talent Search, and I could find no correlation. Yeah, I couldn't either. So, we give that rumor two and a half stars. Very nice. I used to love Star Search. I never really watched it that much, but I do know that Rosie O'Donnell got her start there. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. Okay. Oh, she killed. I was a big fan. She won, like, 15 weeks in a row or something like that. Was she—well, it had adult stuff, too, or was it just kids? Oh, her sets were filthy.

5:27Right. So, yeah, they had Talent Search, but the cable system had a gimmick at first, which was a remote control that was wired to the cable box, I guess, that let you interact with the shows, and it didn't work out. I think they realized that that gimmick, like, didn't fully work. They also had other financial difficulties, and I think it launched in 77 when it was done by 84.

5:57But one of the channels, which was Pinwheel, or C3, lived on. It was created by a woman named Vivian Horner, who came from the great TV show The Electric Company. Yeah. And it was commercial-free programming for preschool kids. 20—or, no, 12 hours a day of it, 14 hours a day on weekends, and like you said, commercial-free. And that was the network, right? And Pinwheel also had an eponymous show called Pinwheel, which I also watched a lot.

6:28Now, what was that?

6:31I mean, it was a show where live human actors interacted with puppets. Okay. The most memorable character for me was Gary Gannou. Oh, is that where that came from? Yeah, there's no Gannou's—wait, there's no Gannou's, like, good Gannou's with Gary Gannou. I've heard Gary Gannou. I had no idea what the origin was. So any word that started with N, he said good, like, he added that G at the very beginning. What a bit. Can you imagine him just hanging out late one night, smoking a joint, and being like, I've got it?

7:04Yeah, it was one of those things. It was late 70s, early 80s, pot-smoking, like, kids—like, kids programmers, essentially, is what that kind of show was. Okay.

Pinwheel and the Nickelodeon Name

7:17That's great.

Pinwheel and the Nickelodeon Name

7:18It was good. But the whole network was called Pinwheel 2 at first until somebody was like, hey, I really like the sound of the word Nickelodeon. And they said it, like, 50 times in this one meeting, and finally everybody was worn down enough that they were like, we'll change the network Pinwheel to Nickelodeon. I think that was in 1979. Yeah, 79. And you're right. I think, you know, a Nickelodeon was like an old-timey, like, movie house that you paid a nickel to get into, but they didn't name it for that reason. I think they—like you said, I think they just thought it had a nice ring to it, I guess.

7:50Yeah, and also, weirdly, they had an old-timey man as their first logo, an old-timey man looking into, like, a, I guess, like a small movie player. Yeah. And it was, like, right in—it dovetailed with that era where if you went to Wendy's, like, their wallpaper was made of, like, 1910 newspaper ads. Oh, yeah. Old Wendy's is great. And Tiffany Lamps and all that. Uh-huh. I'm still unsettled by those high-laced women's boots. Right.

8:20That they always advertised. Yeah. Too sexy. I might have seen ads for wicker wheelchairs, too. Maybe that's where that came from. Yeah, your biggest fear. But at any rate, they got rid of that after a couple of years, and they came up with the first good Nickelodeon logo, which is a silver pinball with Nickelodeon written over it in different colors. It was very pretty. Yeah, very popular bubble letter style at the time.

The Young Peoples Network and Live Wire

8:46A year later, in 1980, a guy named Cy Schneider, who was an advertising executive, became the first president of the network. Mm-hmm. He had a little experience. He was involved on the marketing advertising side when Mattel sponsored the Mickey Mouse Club in the 50s. So he had a little bit of experience with kids' TV from the ad side. But this was kind of a new jam for him. So he started marketing Nickelodeon as the young people's network. And they had some, you know, fun shows. I do remember, I didn't watch any of these, but I remember Reggie Jackson's World of Sports.

9:20I remember that being a thing. Mm-hmm. And I also remember the Leonard Nimoy show being a thing. Leonard Nimoy's standby, colon, lights, camera, action. Yeah, I never saw or even heard of either of those shows. But it kind of gives you a taste of how Nickelodeon started out as slightly, it skewed slightly older. So I could see 14-year-old boys watching those. Yeah, I was nine at the time. So I was aware it was around, I was aware of the show Live Wire, which was a live tape show in front of a teenage audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater, even, in New York City.

9:56It was like a current event show. So I knew about that show, and it was really popular. It won their, gave them their first Cable Ace Award. And then I don't think we mentioned that they were splitting airtime, like they ran programming during the day, but the A&E Network was on after hours. Right. Sexy ballet. That's right. Live Wire, I looked into that a little bit because I never watched it. I don't know that I'd even heard of it, to tell you the truth. But when I saw like the set, it rang like a little bit, like a vague bell.

10:29But it was definitely older kids, kids older than me, like teens. And there is a, there's a clip you can find of Adam Horowitz, King Ed Rock from BC Boys. Oh, yeah. As a 17-year-old posing as a, like he went into the audience of Live Wire, and he asked a question of Africa Bombada, who was the guest at the time. And he's like, hey, have you heard that, that new record from the BC Boys, Cookie Puss? And he got Africa Bombada to admit like, yeah, he listened to it and he had the record and he liked it.

11:02Without ever saying like, I'm one of the BC Boys. Like he was just plugging this as like just some average audience member. It's pretty great. Oh, that's funny. I mean, Live Wire had some good stuff. Like R.E.M. performed on Live Wire in 83. The Ramones. The Ramones did. I know that Frank Zappa was a guest. So they were definitely like somebody cool was running that show. Yeah. And not only like they were cool enough to want those people on, they were cool enough to get those people on that show. Right. Yeah. This is on Nickelodeon, everybody.

11:33And this is, it was one of their first like really great shows. And then something else changed almost immediately when Nickelodeon just really started getting going.

Geraldine Laybourne and Canadian Imports

11:44They brought on a woman named Geraldine Laybourne and she was kind of like, not the antithesis to Cy Schneider, but certainly had a different view of what Nickelodeon should be doing. Cy Schneider's thing was, you know, like you said, he came from the advertising to kids world. What's wrong with that? And Geraldine Laybourne's whole thing was like, let's, let's find out what the kids want and go on that premise and not try to sell them stuff. Let's just like really make this a network for kids rather than just saying that's what it is.

12:17And really it's for advertising or something like that. Yeah, for sure. I think Schneider was a bit older too, if he was working on the Mickey Mouse Club in the 1950s. This was like 30 years after that. Yeah. And she also recognized like, hey, you know, a lot of people are treating this network and these shows as a stepping stone, like get in the door doing these children's shows so they can go on and do other things in Hollywood. And she was like, I want staff that like wants to do this and wants and is dedicated to like kids programming, which seemed like a really kind of savvy move, I think.

12:51For sure. For sure. It didn't matter whether you did cocaine. That was not part of it. Right. It was how do you feel about kids programming, right? That's right. Uh-huh. Full stop. One of the things that Nick did, I'm just going to call it Nick because I watch so much of it I'm on a first name basis with it. Yeah. But they would basically poach TV shows from Canada. Yeah. They still do, as a matter of fact. There's still like a lot of the shows that were on Nickelodeon that I watched as a youngster. I was like, something's not quite right with this show.

13:21Turns out they were all Canadian. As an American, it seems slightly sideways. Exactly. I'm like, these people are really nice. Yeah, exactly. You Can't Do That on Television was a Canadian show. That came from Ottawa Station a couple of years previous from its debut on Nickelodeon in 1981. And that was a great show. It was created by Roger Price and Jeffrey Darby. And it was a skit show that was like squarely aimed at making kids laugh, like that kind of humor.

13:51Yeah. And one of the ways that they did that is that the teen and even preteen actors had like a say in how the scripts went and like what the scenes were. And so that was cool in and of itself because, I mean, they were speaking directly to you. It kind of ran through that filter. And then also, they would, the show itself was almost like a character. The show itself could be like a set or a scene or something like that. And not just like them chatting in between shooting. Like there could be, if I remember correctly, there was a scene where one of the kids was playing a character who was chained up in a dungeon.

14:28And another kid who wasn't dressed like them just came in and took over for them because that kid had to like go home and do homework or something like that. And they did it in the middle of the scene. So like there was, it was just kind of weird like that. And it really worked for that show. It's, it's a really good show. I went back and watched it. And you definitely have to be of that age to really appreciate it. But I remember loving they can't, or you can't do that on television. Yeah, I, I went back and watched a lot of this stuff, like clips on YouTube.

15:00And I realized that I watched more of this than I remember watching, I guess. And I remember that guy, who was the main guy on that show? Like the main adult cast member. His name was Les Lye. Les Lye, that's it. I think they, he went by Les too because they all went by their real first names. Yeah, it was kind of like, if you've ever seen the Larry Sanders show, it was kind of like that. They would have these meta moments. Right, exactly. Well put. This is the, this preceded the Larry Sanders show and was actually where it came from.

15:31Are you joking? Yeah. Okay. Well, it might have been. I gotta be. You never know. And Alanis Morissette was also on it too, because you can't have a Canadian TV show without having Alanis Morissette on it. Yeah, ironic that she was on that show, right?

You Can Not Do That on Television and Slime

15:45I don't know. Do you think? Well, that was where the slime came from. Uh, Nickelodeon is very famous for its slime. Uh, in fact, I am using, uh, the title that Livia, who helped us with this, titled it, uh, Nickelodeon, the slime of our lives. Great title. Well, but Nickelodeon has always been associated with that green slime, and it got its first, uh, dump on, you can't do that on television. Yeah, if you said, I don't know, you would get slimed. That's just how it went. Sorry. Oh, is that the trigger? Yeah, I don't make the rules.

16:16It's just how it went. Except for one show, and this just goes to show you how early 80s this was. They had an episode where the Russians took over, and the slime was red slime instead. And if anyone who said the word freedom would get slimed. Well, apparently the story of how it became green slime was an accident, because they, like, had made the slime but couldn't shoot that day or something, and it turned green by the next day. And so they ended up with green slime. Yeah, and then I guess you would get, like, a bonus of something between $25 to $50.

16:48I guess it depends on how much you held out for. And they would shoot all the sliming scenes at the end of the day, and then you would get slimed, and then they would cut, and you would run off to the showers, because different iterations of slime sometimes turn to paste in your hair if you didn't get it out fast enough. And they finally found the right one is a methyl cellulose blend that had zero allergens in it, so they could even dump it on audience members without fear of litigation. Right.

17:18Yeah. Or at least them winning litigation. But it went through all sorts of different things, like cottage cheese, vegetable oil, vanilla pudding, Jell-O for a little while. Yeah, applesauce. Yeah. Should we take a break? Yeah, I'm getting kind of excited, so yeah. All right. It's getting good, everybody. So we'll be right back with more on Nick.

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Bob Pittman and the New Brand Identity

21:58In late 83, a guy named Bob Pittman, who we've talked about, you know, one of the founders of MTV and our boss at iHeartMedia. It's several rungs up. I don't know if he would consider himself our boss. I think he may know who we are, at least. Perhaps. Yeah, Bob runs iHeartMedia, and he became head of Nickelodeon's parent company, which was Warner Amex at the time.

22:28He was, in 83, he was a lot younger than Cy Schneider was. And the writing was on the wall that, like, Schneider wasn't going to be around too long and younger folks were going to be running this younger, like, viewership network. Yeah, and Pittman had a lot of cred around the television world because of MTV just from two years before, right? Mm-hmm. And so he took over Nickelodeon, or he didn't take over Nickelodeon. He, when he became the head of Warner Amex, he was now over the people who were running Nickelodeon, and he took an interest in it early on.

23:06And so after Schneider left, Geraldine Laybourne was put as the head of the network, and now Nickelodeon really blossomed. Like, this is the Nickelodeon I remember and, like, really loved. This is 1984, I think. One of the first things that Laybourne did was she turned to the Fred Allen agency, which had helped basically figure out how MTV should brand itself. She said, do this for Nickelodeon, and they got to town. Yeah, the other thing they did was they started selling ads and commercials, which they realized, I think, pretty quickly afterward, like, hey, that's a pretty good idea to start getting some money flowing in.

23:46And so Fred Allen firm comes in. They said, all right, we're going to do focus groups. We're going to get kids together, and we're going to find out what they want. And what they found out was kids were kind of roundly annoyed by adults that were patronizing and trying to get them to watch something that basically sucked. And they were tired of it. So they said, you know what we're going to do then? We're going to craft this network around this idea and this theme that, like, this is for kids, and this is for kids to stand up and, like, shout, like, hey, you're not listening to me.

24:26Like, this is for us. And do things that we want to see finally. Right. Like, if I remember correctly, an early iteration of their new logo was a child setting a couch on fire inside a living room. I think you're right. Yeah. But they actually did redo the logo. They're like, this pinball and rainbow letters thing is so childish and patronizing. Yeah. Sci-Schneider. Come on. I still like it. Oh, really? Yeah. I thought it was very cute. All right. I would look at it all day long if I could.

24:57Well, you can do that if you want to. But they, I guess I could. But they changed the logo by essentially picking what designers roundly think of as the ugliest color around. It's Pantone 21. I don't know if you say the zero first, maybe. Pantone 021 orange. Yeah. Which is now recognized pretty much everywhere as Nickelodeon orange. But at the time, because everybody thought it was so ugly, no one used it. So Nickelodeon basically claimed this ugly color and it became just like completely synonymous with the network.

25:30It was a great branding move. Yeah. Actually, I just looked up the previous logos and I had forgotten the little pinball multicolored balloon letter thing. Mm-hmm. But now that I see it, I totally remember it. No, it was a good logo. Yeah. Anything with different color balloon lettering is A-OK in my book. Well, you're a child of the 80s like me. Yeah. And, you know, as we'll see, many of the sets and everything in the 80s, I guess we'll get to that. But they had some pretty legendary like super 80s sets on their shows. Yes, they do.

26:01Man, I could look at pictures of those all day too. But the logo was animated so it could take, you know, take different shapes. Like sometimes it was an ice cream cone or a rocket ship or something. And then later on when slime became like sort of what the network was, you know, at least like a symbol of the network, it looked like a slime splat. And that's kind of what they stuck with. They also did bumpers, you know, coming in and out of commercial breaks. Mm-hmm. Like the animated ones. There was a series of them by like a doo-wop singing group called the Jive Five.

26:37Those were great. Do you remember those? Yeah. And I went and watched some of them today and I was like, oh, yeah, I remember these. They were great. There are two standouts. One I can do is Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nickelodeon. Nice. There's another one. I've never been able to do it. It's too fast for my thick tongue, but it is great. So just go look up Nick Jive Five bumpers and you'll see what I'm talking about. Well, what was the fast one? Like just tell me a slowed down version or something so I might recognize it.

27:08Um, no. No? All right. I'll look it up after. Yeah. You're going to have to do that. Hey, man. I admire your, you know, gumption to stick up for yourself. I thought about it. Uh, so with lay born running the show, um, they started doing some pretty great original programs. Uh, they had a sketch show called out of control that I remember is hosted by Dave Gouillet of, uh, full house. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and a show called Turkey TV, which I had not heard of until I saw the description

27:40that it was like a clip show basically hosted by a VJ essentially. And then I was like, yeah, I think I remember that one. I do not remember that one at all, but they would do something that, uh, Nickelodeon was also a really good at besides poaching Canadian shows. They would go overseas and find, um, funny clips or funny commercials or whatever. Um, sometimes other clips from other kids shows like in completely different languages and then they would overdub them in English and use them.

28:12Uh, and they did that with Turkey TV a lot too. So that was like, that was, they just did that all the time. Now I'm like, yeah, those kids were totally Danish. I had no idea at the time, but again, I was like, there's something not quite right about how these kids are dressed and the toys they're playing with. Yeah. That's funny. It, yeah, it's, that's exactly what it was. I was watching that without knowing it. That's just funny that a kid can be like something slightly off here and I can't pinpoint what it is because you didn't know they did stuff like that back then.

28:43And I always shrugged and was like, whatever, it's still fun to watch, but it was always there, you know, a little, the great gazoo was over my shoulder. Like it's European. Right.

Double Dare and Game Show Success

28:54So, uh, Laybourne went back to Darby, one of the guys who co-created, you can't do that on television. It was like, Hey, what else you got? And he said, um, what about like a game show, uh, where kids go through a kind of a crazy obstacle course or do these wacky things. And that was the seed of the idea that became double dare. Uh, I watched a episode of double dare earlier today too. It was a lot of fun to see. And it was like truth or dare where you could answer a trivia question or dare the other

29:25team if you didn't have the answer. And if they didn't have the answer, they could double dare back. And generally at that point that the team would opt for what was called the physical challenge. And it was, you know, the one I watched today was, uh, two kids stand on one side of the room and throw eggs, uh, at the two kids on the other side who are blindfolded and holding like, uh, you know, like marching band crash symbols in their hand. And the first one to just randomly crash a crash symbol as the egg comes at them without

29:56being able to see it as the team who wins. So just really fun, dumb stuff. If you're, you know, nine to 12 years old. Yeah. Like what a great idea, but, um, not only though, was it like, like there were great little parts like that, the whole thing, every single part was just operating on all cylinders. Yeah. The host, Mark Summers, was somehow perfect for that show. He was great. He was wonderful. Um, the set, like you said, it was in the Memphis style, which was huge in the eighties.

30:27Yeah. Uh, like Pee Wee's Playhouse was Memphis. Um, you, you would know Memphis if you, if you're not familiar with the term, you've seen it a million times, but those sets are just a feast for the eyes. And then, yeah, the things they came up with, like the, one of my favorites was the picket card where you had to, for a physical challenge, you had to get a flag out of a giant nose and to get the flag out, you had to pick out boogers first and then slime would come out of the nose. And then after all that, you had to stick your arm all the way up there and pull the

30:57flag out. That's just so fun to create shows like this. Like, that's what kids want to see. Exactly. Yeah. And then the other thing, every single contestant was so psyched to be there. Yeah. It took it so seriously. It was completely sincere. It was just a wonderful, I love Double Dare. I could watch Double Dare all day long. Yeah. You can do a lot of this stuff all day long. I know. Uh, can you imagine getting that phone call or letter in the mail where you are, are

31:28picked to be a contestant on that show and what like that must've felt like as a kid? Yeah, for sure. For other kids, I, I, I would have dreaded that. Oh, really? Yeah. I was that kid who was like in the circus when the clowns were coming down the aisle. I would be like, do not pick me, please. God, please don't pick me. Yeah. That was my dad. What? He would, he wanted to be picked? No, no, no. My dad would always. He didn't want to be picked. Yeah. Like, I wonder if I should even say this. I think I will. No, I'm not going to say it.

31:59Okay. My dad was not a participant. Let's just say that. All right. Well, I'm. In life like that. I'm with him on, on that. I just, I, I don't like, I don't like the spotlight, you know? What about today? If you like went to a theme park and they were like, let's get this guy out of the audience. Would you do it? Or would, cause you've got a lot of experience on stage now. I would have to do it. I mean, you're a jerk to not just do it if they pick you. But you wouldn't like love being picked. No. And I would be just like breathlessly anxious the entire time. Yeah. Yeah. They'd be like, why is that guy's hand trembling?

32:29That's funny because you stand on stage in front of like 2000 people and are great. I know. But think about how much stage fright I had to get over. That's true. And you're still standing up there with your hand trembling. Exactly. Have you ever seen me on stage at a stuff you should know show? And I'm picking up my water with both hands. Right. It's because they're too trembly to pick them up by themselves. Well, maybe that's part of the magic. It makes you good. Thanks, man. I think you're great too because you're so laid back. It's just so easy for you. Hey, it's, uh, we're the yin and yang, you know?

33:01I'm the, um, the shuttery side. That's right. So these were all shot, uh, at the time in Philadelphia at the W.H.Y.Y. studios. And, um, you know, it was a big hit. Mark Summers, everyone loved him, like you said. And that was not their first, but, you know, one of the early, like, big, big breakouts that made Nickelodeon kind of a juggernaut.

Nick at Night and Live Action Sitcoms

33:22Yeah. One of the other things that made Nickelodeon a juggernaut was after A&E was like, sayonara, we're going to form our own full network. Um, Nickelodeon had the evening hours to fill all of a sudden. So they just did what you do. They went and turned to, um, reruns of classic TV shows, but they branded it as Nick at Night. And I was into this too. Like, I seriously had Nickelodeon on all the time. This is the stuff I would watch when I would go buy a six-pack of Kingsbury non-alcoholic

33:54beer and Slim Jims and Twix and just settle in for the night. It was just sit there and watch, like, F Troop and Mr. Ed and I Spy. I just, it just, the whole network just spoke directly to me. Yeah. I mean, I still say if I had, like, one wish, it might be to, for you and I to have grown up in the same neighborhood and been the same age. I could have learned a lot from you. We'd both be a lot different, I think. Yeah, probably so. I'd be more like you and you'd be more like me. Exactly. There's probably a lot of listeners out there right now who are like, wait a minute, you

34:25guys didn't grow up in the same neighborhood? I wish. So the network grew. They eventually would partner with Universal Studios and open a, like, studios there and kind of moved Nickelodeon there, which was a big deal because all of a sudden that was like a tourist attraction. And if you were a visitor to Universal, you could sit in the audience and maybe even be on some of these shows if you got pulled from the audience. Not me. Not me. And after Double Dare, they were like, these game shows are kind of hot, so they had a

34:57show called Finder's Keepers. I don't think I watched this a ton, but I definitely remember because it was a big, giant, fake house, and they would hide stuff in there, and kids could just basically completely destroy the place looking for the hidden items. Yes. I don't know if I watched that one either. I went and looked at pictures of the set, and that didn't really ring a bell, but I was familiar with the concept. Guts, I'd never heard of before. Same. It was like a ninja warrior type thing, I think. Yeah.

35:27But again, I've run Nickelodeon years and years before. Legends of the Hidden Temple, it was essentially like a double there where you would answer questions, usually geography related. And then for the physical challenge, it was running through this giant temple that was like cross-section, so you could see the person running through in it, and there were secret passages and stuff you need to find, like the artifact or whatever. I didn't watch that, but I remember seeing ads for it when I was watching the next level

35:59of stuff on Nickelodeon, like Pete and Pete. Yeah, the late 80s and early 90s, and this is, you know, late high school and early college for me, so I was definitely out of the picture by now. But I remember for sure the show Hey Dude, and I remember us in college even, I think sort of ironically watching it occasionally. Okay. Yeah, I didn't watch that. I didn't watch Salute Your Shorts or Clarissa Explains at all, but they were all sitcoms, like live action sitcoms. Yeah. And they were huge hits, right?

36:29Yeah, oh yeah. The one that gets me, and this show is Canadian too, if I'm not mistaken, but The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Yeah, that was a big one. Is still one of the best shows ever made. Like, it still holds up. Okay. I never saw it. You're just going to have to trust me. I didn't know I was about to stun you with that revelation. No, I mean, I was just too old, and I never caught it after, so I've heard the legend of how great that show is. I should probably check it out now. Yeah, you should. And you know who else would love it is Ruby. It's totally up her alley, like the kind of weird humor.

37:03I really think she'd like it. All right, we'll check it out. The only time that I've ever been starstruck, Chuck, that I can remember, like genuinely starstruck, was when we did a live show in San Francisco at the Mariners Hall. And we followed a Pete and Pete reunion. Oh, that's right. So they were there when we were coming in, and I could not believe who I was in the same room with. I hung out and talked to little Pete. Big Pete was kind of in and out, but I was just barely hanging on during that conversation.

37:35Yeah, I remember one other time you were starstruck when we got to go to the Simpsons stable read, and we met Matt Groening. Fair enough, yeah. Because I was the same. You and I were both, like, tiny children. Yeah, it's true. That's true. Yeah, it was great. Should we take a break? Yes. All right, we're going to take a break and move into the cartoon era right after this. Hey, everybody.

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38:36See Lowe's.com for more details. Soil offer excludes Alaska and Hawaii. Everyone has a story to tell. What's yours? The moment you met your partner, landed that promotion? For people living with a rare disease, life can feel divided into before the diagnosis and all the after moments that follow. On Voices of Vivgart, Vivgart is also known as its generic name, Efgart Tigamod Alpha FCAB. You'll hear powerful stories from people facing challenges and embracing a life with a rare disease.

39:07Join host Andra Stratton as she guides listeners through honest conversations about life after diagnosis. You'll hear how each guest worked with her care team on their treatment plan, as well as their personal challenges, setbacks, progress, and moments of connection. These stories reveal that life is bigger than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Listen to Voices of Vivgart on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

39:36Hey Chuck, YouTube Premium has become one of those things that makes your everyday YouTube experience a little better, especially if you're a dog owner. Because if you wanted to go find out more about how to train your dog, all you have to do is go on to YouTube Premium, type in dog training videos, and sit back and learn. Yeah, between Gibson and Momo, we're constantly looking up something dog-related, like when Gibson suddenly decided barking at the mailman was his full-time job. Yeah, or Momo likes to chew things a lot, and sometimes it's not always things that she should be chewing.

40:07Yeah, so naturally, YouTube is one of the first places someone might use for training tips. Everything from stopping barking and jumping to getting maybe a little bit better at walking on a leash. But what about dog nutrition, too? You got to know about that these days, and there's an endless world of videos about dog nutrition on YouTube Premium. What foods are actually safe? Is homemade dog food a good idea? Yeah, I mean, look at this one right here. This is veterinarian approved, and look at this lady. Her name is Dr. Wolf. Are you kidding me? So YouTube has a ton of creators, not just Dr. Wolf, who can help you learn a lot more

40:38and make everyday pet parent decisions feel a little less overwhelming. Yeah, I mean, that's where YouTube Premium really comes in. It takes something you already love, which is YouTube, and makes it even better because you get an enhanced, supercharged YouTube experience. It's got benefits that make it easier to enjoy the content and creators that you're into whenever and wherever you need them. Well, and now here we are watching guilty dog videos, which is my guilty pleasure. Look at these guys. Yeah, I know. I feel guilty watching them, but you just can't look away. It's too adorable and sad. I know. Poor buddies.

41:09And since YouTube Premium has ad-free viewing, we can watch guilty dog videos uninterrupted. Plus, background play means we can keep listening to those poor guilty dogs with our screen locked, which is pretty handy when you're walking the dog, right? That's right. And with offline downloads, you can save videos ahead of time, which is awesome, and access them even when you don't have Wi-Fi. So if you like YouTube, you'll love Premium. Whether you're figuring out the latest weird dog behavior or looking for something useful for your next walk or maybe just indulging in your guilty pleasure, guilty dog videos,

41:39YouTube Premium makes the whole experience more seamless. Sign up now for your free trial. Terms and conditions apply. So I think one of the things we're back, by the way, Chuck,

The Cartoon Era and SpongeBob SquarePants

42:08and one of the things that Nickelodeon is now thought of more than anything else is a place where, like, some really great cartoons have been birthed. Yeah.

42:18Not the least of which was Ren and Stimpy, which I always associate with MTV because it got picked up by MTV, like, I think while it was still original stuff was running. But they syndicated it so fast that MTV had it, too, if I'm not mistaken. But regardless, it started out on Nickelodeon. Yeah, the Ren and Stimpy show, a show called Doug, and, of course, Rugrats, all premiered in 1991, which is kind of crazy because those shows were all huge.

42:48Laborn was still the network head in 91 but left about five years after that and was succeeded in 96 by a guy named Herb Scannell, I guess. Sure. And he really, I guess, was, like, this animation thing is the thing. We should keep doing it. Ren and Stimpy, and, you know, parents, this is where things get a little dodgy if you want to tune out if you have kids in the car. But the creator of Ren and Stimpy, John Crisfalusi, he ran the first two years, two seasons of that show, and it was really his brainchild, and it was such a just amazing, wonderful, hysterical show.

43:23But apparently he, like, couldn't stay on budget and would blow a lot of deadlines. So they were like, you're out of here. And the last three seasons I think he was not a part of, and everyone was crushed at the time. But then many years later in 2018, he was exposed. Two women came forward and was like, this guy sexually abused us in the 90s when we were 13 and 15. I think one of them, like, he had a full-on, like, relationship as a 15-, 16-year-old,

43:54which is just, you know, horrendous and sick. And he later on gave a pretty terrible non-apology where he blamed his mental health at the time and his poor impulse control. He quit the business. The statute of limitations had passed to do anything about that, unfortunately. But that was, you know, that was unfortunately sort of the sad way that Ren and Stimpy ended. Yeah, Ren and Stimpy, like you said, it carried on without him for years.

44:25And it was great still, too. Yeah. So by 96, Nickelodeon is the biggest thing in the world, basically. They had the most daily viewers of any cable channel, and they held that spot for 16 years, which is quite a run. They had a bunch of other big cartoons, one called Hey Arnold that I'd heard of. The Adventures of Jimmy Neutron. Boy Genius was a big one in the early 2000s. And then, you know, kind of leaning away from these sort of wackier shows, they had shows like Avatar, The Last Airbender,

44:57and then its spinoff, The Legend of Korra, which is voiced, Korra is voiced by friend of the show and friend in real life, Janet Varney. Yeah, I saw that. It's pretty awesome. It's the best. Ruby really got into that show for a while. I was watching it with her, and it's really good. And Janet was very sweet and would send Ruby birthday videos with her, like kind of talking as Korra, and it's just, Janet's the best. That's awesome. Yeah. Yeah, I remember you telling me that, and now I've connected the dots. Yeah, yeah.

45:27Yeah, so we've gone way out of my wheelhouse. Now, the last one, the last cartoon that I watched consistently came out in 93. It was Rocco's Modern Life, which was really great. And I also used to watch Doug. It was a sweet cartoon. Yeah, I remember Doug. Kind of like a Diary of a Wimpy Kid kind of thing a little bit, too. You know, he was just too gentle for, you know, his age group or something like that. Yeah. But far and away, the biggest cartoon that ever came out of Nickelodeon,

45:57the biggest cartoon that maybe had ever been on television was and is Spongebob Squarepants. And that started in 1999. And a guy named Steven Hillenburg, who I guess studied to be a marine biologist kind of famously, he created Spongebob Squarepants instead. And I think it was probably a pretty good move on his part. Great move. It's still going today. It's in its 17th season. As of two years ago, when it hit its 25th anniversary, the world learned that Nickelodeon had supposedly earned $16 billion from Spongebob retail stuff.

46:37Toys and clothes and, you know, you name it. Like anything up to and including a Broadway musical. Yeah, and Hillenburg got a substantial chunk of that. He had negotiated, I think, from the outset, like a pretty decent amount of the merch percentage. Yeah. George Lucas advice. Yeah. Oh, yeah. The back end is what you want, right? Well, no. Lucas was like merchandising. Like he negotiated that Star Wars merchandising early on. And from then on, everyone was like, that's the move. Yeah. It's always really paid off for us in ACES. Well, he – I think they got mad at him about that, though, right?

Behind the Scenes Controversies and Quiet on the Set

47:12Yeah.

Behind the Scenes Controversies and Quiet on the Set

47:13So, we can kind of jump ahead a little bit because today there's a lot of Nickelodeon fans who are just really upset and heartbroken and frustrated because they feel like the network was allowed to really get run into the ground. And they lay the blame mostly at the head of the network from 2006 to 2018. Her name is Saima Zargami. And she is apparently well known for not being happy that Hillenburg made as much money as he did from the SpongeBob rev share arrangement.

47:43Yeah. And so, she made sure that if you were a new creator coming to bring a show on to Nick, you got zero bagel percentage of the merch sales from your creation. So, that would scare away new creators who had anything good under their belt, right? Yeah. So, that was one thing. So, much so that they actually had what can really only be taken as a desperate attempt to attract new talent. They had a Nickelodeon animated shorts program in 2012, which is like, hey, if you're unknown, submit a brief version of your cartoon and maybe we'll pick it up.

48:19You don't do that if you have, like, established creators coming to you with shows, right? Yeah. That's kind of a sneaky way to get free programming. Exactly. Or to get people who you can exploit because they're hungry to get their foot in the door, right? So, there's that. She also turned down Adventure Time when it was picked in Nickelodeon first, which is like, if you're a cartoon fan and you turn down Adventure Time, you're just a pariah. And then also, Chuck, and this is much more serious, she is basically, she's really criticized for essentially turning her head the other way, looking the other way.

48:53While a guy named Dan Snyder basically carried out a reign of terror among a lot of the live action shows that featured child actors who did not get enough protection from the network. Yeah, for sure. Like, there was a systemic child sexual abuse problem at Nickelodeon. That's the only way to say it. Yeah. There was a documentary. Did you ever see it? No. What's it called? Quiet on the Set? Yeah. Quiet on the Set, colon, the dark side of kids TV. It was a couple of years ago, and I watched it.

49:25It's pretty upsetting, but, you know, you're a big Nickelodeon guy, so I don't know if you want to, like, you know all this happened, but it might be upsetting for you to, like, actually see the documentary. Yeah. I mean, even without being a Nickelodeon guy, I'm sure it's upsetting, right? It is. But Dan Snyder, you may know him. He was an actor. He was Dennis on Head of the Class. Right. He was in Better Off Dead with John Cusack.

49:49That was him? Yeah, yeah. He was the sort of loser neighbor who the exchange student lived with. Yeah. I never put those two characters together, but, yeah, I see it now. So that's where I knew him from. But he started out as a writer in 1994 on the sketch show All That and created some of their biggest live-action shows. The Amanda Show with Amanda Bynes, Drake and Josh, Zoe 101, iCarly, Henry Danger. Like, these are humongous shows. And at the time, he was being criticized, like, even while he was there, of, like, man, this guy's, like, putting pretty overt, like, sexual humor in these shows and, like, making girls do, like, really kind of pretty obvious sexual things.

50:35Like, you know, things that were very phallic. Like, obviously, like, when you see clips in the documentary, it's just like, man, are you kidding me? Like, why didn't someone say something? Right. It's just so obvious. Well, later on, he denied. Like, we never did anything like that intentionally. He basically gaslit everyone with his apology later. But there was more abuse going on, too, right? Yeah. Drake Bell, who I didn't watch it, but I'm guessing he was one of the characters on Drake and Josh as well. Yeah. He started out on the Amanda Show with Amanda Bynes.

51:06He had a dialogue coach who sexually abused him, a dialogue coach named Brian Peck, who was convicted in 2004. 2004 was also a bad year in that a production assistant named Jason Handy, who worked with some child actors on All That and the Amanda Show. He got a six-year sentence for sexually abusing two girls. And then a few years after that, another Nickelodeon worker, an animator named Ezel Channel, was convicted of sexually abusing boys at the studio.

51:37So, this is what I was saying when I was saying, like, Saima Zorgami is not very well thought of among fans. Yeah. Just at the very least for that, just for not doing anything about that. And even if she or the other heads didn't know what was going on, the fact that there was that, that it was that easy for people to prey on child actors. Yeah. You got child actors, man. Like, they deserve special protection, even more than your average kid, because your average kid is not in a situation with a bunch of creators and Teamsters and whoever else.

52:18Right. Like, when my niece Mila is on the set, both of her parents are there, and at least one of them is there all the time. Oh, yeah. I'm sure. Like, that's just what you have to do if you have a child actor, and apparently that's just not what was going on everywhere in these shows. No, it was way more lax back then. And, you know, you hear all this stuff, and you're just like, what is going on at Nickelodeon? And it's, the sad truth is, it's, it was a kid's network with kid shows with kid actors. And that's where, like, someone who's a predator will, like, go and get a job. And it's, it's deeply, deeply upsetting that that happened and was allowed to happen.

52:57And there weren't more protections in place. Like, the documentary is just a brutal watch. I bet. So, Dan Schneider, finally, after, I think, 24 years, maybe? No. Yeah. 24 years at the network, he was fired because an actress named Jeanette McCurdy, who was on iCarly and also starred with Ariana Grande on Sam and Cat, which was an iCarly spinoff. She basically came out and was like, I'm not going to keep quiet any longer. And she started essentially, like, saying, like, Dan Schneider did this, Dan Schneider did that. Dan Schneider insisted that I wear a bikini for a hot tub scene, even though I wanted to wear one piece.

53:40He encouraged us to drink as, like, 16-year-olds and stuff, right? So, that was enough to get Dan Schneider pushed out. But then she went further. She published a memoir in 2022 titled, I'm Glad My Mother's Dead. And there's not some ironic twist to that title, like, it's exactly what you think or it sounds like. She was glad her mother's dead, in part because her mother pushed her into acting and basically set her up to be exposed to the stuff she was exposed to. And in that, she refers to Dan Schneider as the creator. And she just alleged some more stuff, too, that really just put a really negative light on Nickelodeon.

54:20Yeah. I mean, ViacomCBS at the time, they did an investigation and came out and said, well, we don't have any evidence of sexual misconduct. But Dan Schneider was verbally abusive, we found out, and he threw tantrums, so he's out of here. When she, and this is even more upsetting, when all this came out, after Sam and Cat was canceled, she had a conference call. This was Jeanette McCurdy, the actress who wrote the book, and the victim, one of the victims. She had a conference call with a bunch of agents and managers, and she was offered, and didn't take it, but she was offered $300,000 just to never talk about it again.

54:57Don't talk about Dan Schneider. Don't talk about Nickelodeon. And she turned it down, and then after that, there were leaks to the media that, oh, the series really ended because she was mad that Ariana Grande was paid more than her, which is about as vile as it gets. What scumbags, man. That's just terrible. Cool. So, like you said, that docuseries came out and really just kind of got the point across about what was going on. There's a journalist who was part of the documentary Scotchy Cool, and they said that a lot of these people are still working in the industry, by the way.

55:32Yeah. So, like you said, Schneider, Dan Schneider issued an apology on YouTube, but you said it was a non-apology. I didn't watch it. Yeah. I mean, he basically gaslit everyone and was like, yeah, you know what, I did some embarrassing things, but I didn't intend to have any sexual jokes on the show. Like, you're just seeing what you want to see, basically. Right. And then Nickelodeon didn't do itself any favors by issuing, like, a really legalese non-apology itself, saying they couldn't corroborate or negate allegations of misdeeds decades ago.

56:03Like, get over it. This sexual abuse is, like, 20 years ago. Yeah. Pretty disappointing. Nickelodeon, like you said, has really gone downhill a lot since then, and, you know, partially because that's kind of what happened to a lot of cable TV networks. Like, people, including kids, obviously, have been moving away from traditional television and that model, and kids probably, like, quicker than even older viewers. So, their ratings have dropped a lot. You know, they were number one for 16 years, the number one cable network.

56:35Now, they are the 60th, 6-0, most popular cable channel with about 122,000 daily viewers. But, you know, they're diversifying. They're doing programming for other TV networks and also doing, like, web stuff and app stuff. Yeah, I looked that up. It's about the same that Disney Channel, not Disney Plus, but the Disney Cable Channel gets every day. So, it seems like it's not just Nick, but they also have about 2.5 times what Cartoon Network gets, but it's only a third of what TV Land gets every day.

57:11So, people go nuts for those Friends reruns. I watch those in hotels a lot. Do you? Yeah, like, you know, flipping it around. Sure. They have the awful motion smoothing on all the hotel TVs. No, you hate this. Oh, man. Of course I do. I just don't even know what you're talking about. Well, I'll have to show you sometime. Okay. But some of those older studio audience sitcoms don't look as bad with that on. I see. So, that's why I'll watch that. Yeah. Now, once I've seen the Friends Without the Laugh Track videos, I can't watch it anymore.

57:46Oh, yeah. I forgot. Those were fun. It wasn't a big loss. But anyway, that's Nickelodeon, everybody, for you. Sorry to end it on a bummer, but that's the state of affairs right now. Hopefully, it'll come back and get great again. And in the meantime, while we wait for Nickelodeon to get great again, how about listener mail?

Listener Mail About Rope and Line

58:06All right. This is short and sweet. Hey, guys. This is On Rope. When rope is cut to length and used for a purpose on a ship, everybody, it becomes line. Whoa. Chuck was using line when hoisting jibs and sails. I've never sailed myself, but whenever I talked with my boss who did sail, I would say rope, and he would correct me and say, no, it's line on a boat. So, as soon as Chuck said rope in his Nantucket story, I stuttered. It's all good to me, though, guys, but passing this along in honor of my old boss, and that is Bill from Latitz, I guess is how you pronounce it.

58:41L-I-T-I-T-Z? Latitz? Latitz? What? Is that in a state or is it its own micronation? I've never heard of it. I'm going to look it up right now, though, while you chit-chat. Okay. Well, thanks a lot, Bill. We're going to try to figure out where you're from. Pennsylvania. Okay. Pennsylvania. I could have guessed that. Yeah. Lancaster County. I love it. Sure. Okay. Oh, hey, Bill hangs out with the Amish there. That's right. All right. Well, Bill, be sure to tell the Amish we say hi. And if you want to be like Bill and correct us ever so gently and kindly like Bill did,

59:11you can send it in an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

59:19Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

59:35Introducing Voices of Vivgard. Vivgard is also known as its generic name, Efgard Tigamod Alpha FCab. And this new show features firsthand stories from people living with a rare disease. Hosted by Andrew Stratton, these perspectives highlight that life is more than a moment, a condition, or a tough day. Living with a rare disease can be challenging, but it does not define the Voices of Vivgard. In these episodes, they share their stories, from diagnosis to working with their care team on their treatment plan. Listen to Voices of Vivgard on the iHeartRadio app,

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