Nickelodeon

Nickelodeon, the children's television station, gets its name from the early movie theatres of the same name, which cost five cents to enter (hence nickel.)

Nickelodeons first appeared in 1905 when John and Harry Davis decided to lower the price of admittance to their makeshift "theatre" (which was actually a storefront with a muslin screen attached to the wall, a box serving as an office and rented chairs) to 5 cents and just play the same movie continuously, instead of the traditional one show per night. Like the channel, they were also called "nick"s for short.

The term was later applied to jukeboxes and player pianos.

Back in the day, the Nickelodeon station was really cool. They had great shows like The Adventures of Pete and Pete, Are You Afraid of the Dark?, and, to a lesser extent, Hey Dude. Everyday they churned out terrific cartoons like Rocko's Modern Life and Ren and Stimpy. Nick even had very amusing game shows like Global Guts, Double Dare, and Legends of the Hidden Temple. Plus SNICK added to the fun, and summers were full of Stick Stickly. But sadly now, that programming is gone.

Now Nickelodeon just shows five hours of Blues Clues, followed by twelve hours of Rugrats, followed by seven hours of I Love Lucy. Replacing the good shows are shoddy one-joke shows like Catdog, The Wild Thornberrys, and Rocket Power. The episodes of these shows are basically re-used jokes from older, more successful shows. Now, when Nickelodeon gets a new show, they fill it up with tons of shameless advertisements. It's terrible. And to top this all off, Nick now shows little rap videos of self-professed pre-teen heart-throb twits such as Li'l Bow Wow, Li'l Romeo, and average sized Aaron Carter. Plus there is a new "TEENick", which is just frightening.

I, for one, believe that Nick no longer puts out a positive message for the next generation of resource suckers. Now this once-great channel turns six-year-old girls into vain Brittany Spears worshipers, and six-year-old boys into mindless masses of generic boy-rappers.

This Nickelodeon tirade is over, thank you.

Nick`el*o"de*on (?), n. [Nickel + odeon.]

A place of entertainment, as for moving picture exhibition, charging a fee or admission price of five cents.

[U. S.]

 

© Webster 1913.