Nickelodeon:The Best of Slimes

8:38Josh Clark:Yeah, your biggest fear.

8:40Chuck Bryant: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.

8:54Josh Clark:Yeah, very popular bubble letter style at the time. A year later in 1980, a guy named Cy Schneider, who was an advertising executive, became the first president of the network. 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.

9:31Josh Clark:I remember that being a thing. And I also remember the Leonard Nimoy show being a thing. Leonard Nimoy's standby, colon, lights, camera, action.

9:41Chuck Bryant: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 can see 14-year-old boys watching those.

9:54Josh Clark:Yeah, I was nine at the time. So I was aware it was around. I was aware of the show Livewire, which was a live tape show in front of a teenage audience at the Ed Sullivan Theater, even, in New York City. It 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.

10:26Chuck Bryant:Right. Sexy ballet. That's right. Livewire, 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. But 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 Livewire and he asked a question of Africa Bombada, who is the guest at the time. he's like, hey, have you heard that new record from the Beastie Boys, Cookie Puss?

11:08Chuck Bryant:And he got Africa Bombada to admit, like, yeah, he listened to it and he had the record and he liked it without ever saying, like, I'm one of the Beastie Boys. Like, he was just plugging this as, like, just some average audience member. It's pretty great.

11:21Josh Clark:Oh, that's funny. I mean, Livewire had some good stuff. Like, REM performed on Livewire 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.

11:34Chuck Bryant: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. And this was one of their first like really great shows. And then something else changed almost immediately when Nickelodeon just really started getting going. They 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.

12:13Chuck Bryant:What's wrong with that? And Geraldine Laybourne's whole thing was like, 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, and really it's for advertising or something like that.

12:31Josh Clark: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.

12:39Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

12:39Josh Clark: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.

13:02Chuck Bryant:For sure. For sure. It didn't matter whether you did cocaine. That was not part of it. It was how do you feel about kids programming, right? That's right.

13:10Josh Clark:Uh-huh. Full stop.

13:11Chuck Bryant: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.

13:17Josh Clark:Yeah.

13:18Chuck Bryant:But they would basically poach TV shows from Canada.

13:22Josh Clark:Yeah.

13:23Chuck Bryant: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. Turns out they were all Canadian.

13:34Josh Clark:As an American, it seems slightly sideways.

13:37Chuck Bryant:Exactly. I'm like, these people are really nice.

13:40Josh Clark: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.

14:02Chuck Bryant:Yeah. 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.

14:40Chuck Bryant:And another kid who wasn't dressed like them just came in and took over for him 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 it was just kind of weird like that and it really worked for that show. 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 you can't do that on television.

15:06Josh Clark:Yeah, I went back and watched a lot of this stuff, like clips on YouTube and 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.

15:25Chuck Bryant:I think he went by Les, too, because they all went by their real first names.

15:29Josh Clark: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.

15:35Chuck Bryant:Right, well put. This preceded the Larry Sanders show and was actually where it came from.

15:42Josh Clark:Are you joking?

15:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Okay. Well, it might have been. I've got to be.

15:45Josh Clark:You never know.

15:47Chuck Bryant:And Alanis Morissette was also on it, too, because you can't have a Canadian TV show without having Alanis Morissette on it.

15:53Josh Clark:Yeah, ironic that she was on that show, right?

15:56Chuck Bryant:I don't know. Do you think?

15:58Josh Clark:Well, that was where the slime came from. Nickelodeon is very famous for its slime. In fact, I am using the title that Livia, who helped us with this, titled it, Nickelodeon, the slime of our lives. Great title. but Nickelodeon has always been associated with that green slime and it got its first dump on you can't do that on television.

16:20Chuck Bryant:Yeah, if you said I don't know, you would get slimed. That's just how it went. Oh, is that the trigger? Yeah, I don't make the rules. It'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.

16:42Josh Clark:Well, apparently the story of how it became green slime was an accident because they 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.

16:54Chuck Bryant:Yeah. And then I guess you would get like a bonus of something between$25 to$50. I 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.

17:29Josh Clark:Right.

17:29Chuck Bryant: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.

17:39Josh Clark:Yeah, applesauce.

17:40Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

17:42Josh Clark:Should we take a break?

17:43Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I'm getting kind of excited, so yeah.

17:46Josh Clark:All right. It's getting good, everybody. So we'll be right back with more on Nick.

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20:04Josh Clark:All right, so You Can't Do That on Television was a pretty decent success, but Nickelodeon itself was not like a huge hit yet. In 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.

20:27Chuck Bryant:Several rungs up. I don't know if he would consider himself our boss.

20:31Josh Clark: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. He 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.

20:59Chuck Bryant:Yeah, and Pittman had a lot of cred around the television world because of MTV just from two years before, right? 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. And 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.

21:47Chuck Bryant:She said, do this for Nickelodeon. And they got to town.

21:51Josh Clark:Yeah. The other thing they did was they started selling ads and commercials.

21:55Chuck Bryant:Right.

21:56Josh Clark:Which they realized, I think, pretty quickly afterward, like, hey, that's a pretty good idea to start getting some money flowing in. 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.

22:42Josh Clark:Like, this is for us. And do things that we want to see finally.

22:46Chuck Bryant:Right. If I remember correctly, an early iteration of their new logo was a child setting a couch on fire inside a living room.

22:54Josh Clark:I think you're right. Yeah.

22:56Chuck Bryant:But they actually did redo the logo. They're like, this pinball and rainbow letters thing is so childish and patronizing. Cy 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. Well, 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, 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.

23:40Chuck Bryant:So Nickelodeon basically claimed this ugly color and it became just like completely synonymous with the network. It was a great branding move.

23:47Josh Clark:Yeah, actually, I just looked up the previous logos and I had forgotten the little pinball multicolored balloon letter thing. But now that I see it, I totally remember it. It was a good logo.

23:58Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Anything with different color balloon lettering is A-OK in my book.

24:03Josh Clark:Well, you're a child of the 80s like me.

24:06Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

24:07Josh Clark: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.

24:16Chuck Bryant:Yes, they do, man. I could look at pictures of those all day, too.

24:19Josh Clark: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.

24:40Chuck Bryant:They also did bumpers, you know, coming in and out of commercial breaks, like the animated ones. There was a series of them by like a doo-wop singing group called the Jive Five.

24:53Josh Clark:Those are great.

24:53Chuck Bryant:Do you remember those?

24:55Josh Clark:Yeah, and I went and watched some of them today, and I was like, oh, yeah, I remember these. They were great.

24:59Chuck Bryant:There are two standouts. One I can do is Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nick, Nickelodeon. Right? 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 5 bumpers, and you'll see what I'm talking about.

25:17Josh Clark:Well, what was the fast one? Like, just tell me a slowed-down version or something so I might recognize it. Um, no. No?

25:26Chuck Bryant:All right, I'll look it up after. Yeah, you're going to have to do that.

25:30Josh Clark:Hey, man, I admire your, you know, gumption to stick up for yourself there.

25:34Chuck Bryant:I thought about it.

25:36Josh Clark:So with Lay Born running the show, they started doing some pretty great original programs. They had a sketch show called Out of Control that I remember was hosted by Dave Coulier of Full House. Yeah.

25:50Chuck Bryant:Yeah.

25:51Josh Clark:and a show called Turkey TV, which I had not heard of until I saw the description that it was like a clip show basically hosted by a VJ essentially. And then I was like, yeah, I think I remember that one.

26:03Chuck Bryant:I do not remember that one at all. But they would do something that Nickelodeon was also really good at. Besides poaching Canadian shows, they would go overseas and find funny clips or funny commercials or whatever. sometimes other clips from other kids shows like in completely different languages and then they would overdub them in English and use them and they did that with Turkey TV a lot too so that was like 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

26:46Josh Clark:yeah that's funny

26:47Chuck Bryant:Yeah, that's exactly what it was. I was watching that without knowing it.

26:51Josh Clark:That's just funny that a kid can be like, something's slightly off here, and I can't pinpoint what it is. Yeah. Because you didn't know they did stuff like that back then.

26:59Chuck Bryant:And I always shrugged, and I was like, whatever, it's still fun to watch. Yeah, exactly. It's on TV. It was always there, you know? The great gazoo was over my shoulder like, it's European, dum-dum.

27:11Josh Clark:So, Laybourne went back to Darby, one of the guys who co-created You Can't Do That on Television, was like, hey, what else you got? And he said, what about like a game show where kids go through kind of a crazy obstacle course or do these wacky things? And that was the seed of the idea that became Double Dare. I watched an episode of Double Dare earlier today, too. It was a lot of fun to see. So good. And it was like truth or dare where you could answer a trivia question or dare the other team 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 the team would opt for what was called the physical challenge and it was, you know, the one I watched today was two kids stand on one side of the room and throw eggs at the two kids on the other side who are blindfolded and holding 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 being able to see it as the team who wins.

28:13Josh Clark:So just really fun, dumb stuff if you're, you know, nine to twelve years old.

28:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah. Like, what a great idea. But not only, though, was it, like, there were great little parts like that. The whole thing, every single part was just operating on all cylinders.

28:30Josh Clark:Yeah.

28:31Chuck Bryant:The host, Mark Summers, was somehow perfect for that show.

28:35Josh Clark:He was great.

28:36Chuck Bryant:He was wonderful. The set, like you said, it was in the Memphis style, which was huge in the 80s. Yeah. Like Pee Wee's Playhouse was Memphis. You would know Memphis 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, one of my favorites was the picket, 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 flag out.

29:14Josh Clark:That's just so fun to create shows like this. That's what kids want to see.

29:19Chuck Bryant:Exactly. And then the other thing, every single contestant was so psyched to be there. It took us so seriously. It was completely sincere. It was just a wonderful—I love Double Dare. I could watch Double Dare all day long.

29:34Josh Clark:Yeah. You can do a lot of this stuff all day long. I know. can you imagine getting that phone call or letter in the mail where you are picked to be a contestant on that show and what like that must have felt like as a kid

29:47Chuck Bryant:yeah for sure for other kids I would have dreaded that

29:52Josh Clark:oh really

29:53Chuck Bryant: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

30:01Josh Clark:yeah that was my dad

30:04Chuck Bryant:what he would he wanted to be picked

30:05Josh Clark:No, no, no. My dad would always. Yeah, like, I wonder if I should even say this. I think I will. No, I'm not going to say it. Okay. My dad was not a participant. Let's just say that.

30:17Chuck Bryant:All right. Well, I'm.

30:18Josh Clark:In life like that.

30:19Chuck Bryant:I'm with him on that. I just, I don't like, I don't like the spotlight, you know.

30:24Josh Clark: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? Because you've got a lot of experience on stage now.

30:31Chuck Bryant:I would have to do it. I mean, you're a jerk to not just do it if they pick you.

30:35Josh Clark:But you wouldn't, like, love being picked.

30:36Chuck Bryant:No, and I would be just, like, breathlessly anxious the entire time, too. Yeah, yeah. They'd be like, why is that guy's hand trembling?

30:44Josh Clark:That's funny, because you stand on stage in front of, like, 2 ,000 people, and they're great.

30:48Chuck Bryant:I know, but think about how much stage fright I had to get over.

30:52Josh Clark:That's true. And you're still standing up there with your hand trembling. Exactly.

30:56Chuck Bryant: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.

31:07Josh Clark:Well, maybe that's part of the magic. It makes you good.

31:09Chuck Bryant:Thanks, man. I think you're great, too, because you're so laid back. It's just so easy for you.

31:14Josh Clark:Hey, we're the yin and yang, you know?

31:17Chuck Bryant:I'm the shuddery side.

31:19Josh Clark:That's right. So these were all shot at the time in Philadelphia at the WHYY studios. And, 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.

31:38Chuck Bryant:Yeah. 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. Nickelodeon had the evening hours to fill all of a sudden. So they just did what you do. They went and turned to 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 beer and Slim Jims and Twix and just settle in for the night. It was just sit there and watch, like, F Troop and Mr.

32:16Chuck Bryant:Ed and I Spy. I just, it just, the whole network just spoke directly to me.

32:21Josh Clark:Yeah. I mean, I still say if I had like one wish, it might be 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.

32:32Chuck Bryant:We'd both be a lot different, I think.

32:34Josh Clark:Yeah, probably so. I'd be more like you and you'd be more like me.

32:37Chuck Bryant:Exactly. There's probably a lot of listeners out there right now who are like, wait a minute, you guys didn't grow up in the same neighborhood?

32:43Josh Clark: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.

33:06Chuck Bryant:Not me. Not me.

33:08Josh Clark:And after Double Dare, they were like, these game shows are kind of hot. So they had a show called Finders 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.

33:27Chuck Bryant: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.

33:37Josh Clark:Same. It was like a ninja warrior type thing, I think. Yeah.

33:43Chuck Bryant:But 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-sectioned. So you could see the person running through in it. And there are 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 of stuff on Nickelodeon like Pete and Pete.

34:18Josh Clark: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.

34:35Chuck Bryant: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.

34:43Josh Clark:Yeah.

34:43Chuck Bryant:And they were huge hits, right?

34:45Josh Clark:Yeah, oh, yeah.

34:46Chuck Bryant: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. 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.

35:03Josh Clark: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.

35:12Chuck Bryant:You should. And you know who else would love it is Ruby. It's totally up her alley, like the kind of weird humor. I 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.

35:32Josh Clark:Uh-huh.

35:33Chuck Bryant: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.

35:51Josh Clark:Yeah, I remember one other time you were starstruck when we got to go to the Simpsons table read, and we met Matt Groening.

35:56Chuck Bryant:Fair enough, yeah.

35:58Josh Clark:Because I was the same. You and I were both, like, tiny children.

36:01Chuck Bryant:That's true. That's true.

36:03Josh Clark:Yeah, it was great. Should we take a break?

36:06Chuck Bryant:Yes.

36:07Josh Clark:All right, we're going to take a break and move into the cartoon era right after this.

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37:04Josh Clark:There's the everyday essential, garlic and olive oil, the savory sweetness of caramelized onion, and globally inspired flavors like the herby with a touch of heat chimichurri, and chili garlic that elevates everything from ramen to stir fry to even grilled meats. Try the chimichurri blend to make your steaks delicious. Each signature seasoning is crafted by flavor experts to make every dish more delicious. When you want to make your best, it's got to be McCormick. Find your favorite at mccormick.com. Are your kids bored with the same old sports? Try fencing, the Olympic and Paralympic sport that

37:46Chuck Bryant:mixes speed, strategy, and fun. It's like chess meets cardio. Quick feet, quick decisions, and a satisfying beep when you score a point. Kids, teens, and adults can start anytime.

37:56Josh Clark:time. Fencing is one of the fastest growing NCAA sports with new colleges adding programs every year. Many clubs have loaner gear. Coaches teach fundamentals and safety from day one. Find a beginner class near you at try fencing.org. That's try fencing.org.

38:27Chuck Bryant:So I think one of the things we're back, by the way, Chuck, and 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. Not 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.

38:58Josh Clark: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. Laborn 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. Um, Ren and Stimpy, uh, 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, uh, the creator of Ren and Stimpy, uh, John Crisfalusi, uh, he ran the first two years, two seasons of that show.

39:39Josh Clark:And it was really his brainchild. And it was such a just amazing, wonderful, hysterical show. Uh, but apparently he like, um, couldn't stay on budget and would blow a lot of deadlines. So he, 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, he had a full-on relationship as a 15, 16-year-old, which is just 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.

40:30Josh Clark: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.

40:42Chuck Bryant:Yeah, Ren and Stimpy, like you said, it carried on without him for years. And it was great still, too.

40:48Josh Clark: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 and then it's spinoff the legend of cora which uh is voiced cora is voiced by friend of the show and friend in real life janet barney yeah i saw that it's pretty awesome it's the best ruby really got into that show and um for a while i was watching it with her and it's really good and janet was very sweet and would send ruby uh birthday videos with her like kind talking as Cora, and it's just, Janet's the best.

41:42Chuck Bryant:That's awesome.

41:43Josh Clark:Yeah.

41:44Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I remember you telling me that, and now I've connected the dots.

41:47Josh Clark:Yeah, yeah.

41:48Chuck Bryant:Yeah, 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.

42:03Josh Clark:Yeah, I remember Doug.

42:04Chuck Bryant:Kind of like a Diary of a Wimpy Kid kind of thing a little bit, too. You know, he's just too gentle for, you know, his age group or something like that. But far and away, the biggest cartoon that ever came out of Nickelodeon, the 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.

42:40Josh Clark: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. Toys and clothes and, you know, you name it. Like anything up to and including a Broadway musical.

43:05Chuck Bryant: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.

43:13Josh Clark:Yeah, George Lucas advice.

43:15Chuck Bryant:Yeah, oh, yeah, the back end is what you want, right?

43:18Josh Clark: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.

43:25Chuck Bryant:Yeah, it's always really paid off for us in ACES.

43:29Josh Clark:Well, I think they got mad at him about that, though, right?

43:33Chuck Bryant:Yeah, so 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. 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.

44:16Chuck Bryant:So that would scare away new creators who had anything good under their belt, right? 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. You don't do that if you have like established creators coming to you with shows, right?

44:45Josh Clark:Yeah, that's kind of a sneaky way to get free programming.

44:49Chuck Bryant: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, while 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.

45:28Josh Clark: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?

45:39Chuck Bryant:No. What's it called? Quiet on the Set?

45:41Josh Clark:Yeah, Quiet on the Set, colon, the dark side of kids' TV. It was a couple of years ago, and I watched it. It'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.

45:56Chuck Bryant:Yeah, I mean, And even without being a Nickelodeon guy, I'm sure it's upsetting, right?

46:00Josh Clark:It is. But Dan Schneider, 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. That was him? Yeah, yeah. He was the sort of loser neighbor who the exchange student lived with.

46:18Chuck Bryant:Yeah. I never put those two characters together, but yeah, I see it now.

46:22Josh Clark: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, like, 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?

47:04Josh Clark:Like, why didn't someone say something? Right. It's just so obvious. While 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?

47:18Chuck Bryant: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. He 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 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.

47:58Chuck Bryant:So 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 it was that easy for people to prey on child actors, 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.

48:39Josh Clark:Right.

48:39Chuck Bryant: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 these shows.

48:55Josh Clark:No, it was way more lax back then. And, you know, you hear all this stuff and you're 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 deeply, deeply upsetting that that happened and was allowed to happen. And there weren't more protections in place. Like, the documentary is just a brutal watch.

49:24Chuck Bryant: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. He encouraged us to drink as like 16-year-olds and stuff, right? So that was enough to get Dan Snyder pushed out.

50:09Chuck Bryant: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 Snyder as the creator. And she just alleged some more stuff to that that really just put a really negative light on Nickelodeon. Yeah.

50:42Josh Clark:I mean, Viacom CBS at the time, they did an investigation that and came out and said, well, we don't have any evidence of sexual misconduct. But Dan Snyder 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.

51:18Josh Clark:Don'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.

51:33Chuck Bryant:What scumbags, man. That's just terrible. So, like you said, that docuseries came out and really just kind of got the point across about what was going on. And 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.

51:54Josh Clark:Yeah.

51:54Chuck Bryant: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.

52:02Josh Clark: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.

52:12Chuck Bryant:Right. 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. Like, get over it. This sexual abuse is like 20 years ago.

52:28Josh Clark:Yeah. Pretty disappointing. Nickelodeon, like you said, has really gone downhill a lot since then. And then, 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 the ratings have dropped a lot. You know, they were number one for 16 years, the number one cable network. Now 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.

53:12Chuck Bryant: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. So people go nuts for those Friends reruns.

53:36Josh Clark:I watch those in hotels a lot. Do you? Yeah, like, you know, flipping it around. They have the awful motion smoothing on all the hotel TVs.

53:46Chuck Bryant:No, you hate this. Oh, man, of course I do. I just don't even know what you're talking about.

53:51Josh Clark:Well, I'll have to show you sometime.

53:53Chuck Bryant:Okay.

53:54Josh Clark:But some of those older studio audience sitcoms don't look as bad with that on. I see. So that's why I watch that.

54:01Chuck Bryant:Yeah, once I've seen the Friends without the Laugh Track videos, I can't watch it anymore. Oh, 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?

54:27Josh Clark:All 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. Oh. 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. L-I-T-I-T-Z? Latitz? Latitz?

55:05Chuck Bryant: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.

55:24Josh Clark:That's right.

55:25Chuck Bryant: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, you can send it in an email to stuffpodcasts at iheartradio.com.

55:40Josh Clark:Stuff 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.

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56:32Chuck Bryant:It's fast, competitive, and even offered at the NCAA level. Find a beginner class near you at tryfencing.org. That's tryfencing.org.

56:42Josh Clark:Seven bucks. That's barely the delivery fee on an order of Dan Dan noodles. But seven bucks is enough to get you out of the house and into something interesting, adventurous because for seven scrawny bucks a month do more gets you at least one pair of tickets to something you'll be psyched to attend a concert comedy perhaps that new exhibit stuff you like and stuff you didn't know you did yet try it free for a month at do more stuff.com slash free and do more this is an iheart podcast guaranteed human