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movies/tv Is Nickelodeon narrowing its demographic too much?


TheMisterManGuy

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Nickelodeon was a network that made made entirely for kids between the ages of 2 and 15, as well as kids at heart. Its programing was diverse, you had preschool shows in the morning, cartoons for elementary schoolers in the daytime, and middle/early high school tween shows for 11-15 year olds in primetime, and Nick at Nite comedies for late night. But Lately I feel the network wants to skew a younger and younger audience. Look at nearly every animated show on the network so far, they're all trying to ride the Cartoon Network surreal train without understanding how those shows worked, and throw butt and fart jokes at the screen constantly to keep 6 year old jimmy's attention (even if its insulting his intelligence). What made the old nicktoons great was that they knew their audience, but they didn't pander to them, they weren't always about butt jokes, and farting, and gross-out. In fact, 9/10 times, that kind of juvenile humor was almost nonexistent, this ment that Nicktoons could be enjoyed by anybody and were some of the best written shows for kids. But Nick thinks kids today don't want that same kind of wit and maturity, which probably one of the reasons why Korra was kicked off.

 

Their live action shows have also suffered. Remember when Clarissa Explains It All could say hell and sex? Or when Are You Afraid of the Dark? tackled themes like murder, death, and truama? Now we have wacky superhero shinanagains and haunted houses filled with ghetto ghosts all with annoying laugh tracks. While Nick's live action shows weren't masterpieces (even in the 90s-early 00s), There was a charm to them, and the kids on the shows were just normal, relatable 12-14 year olds, rather than the high school beenie boppers today. They don't even feel like real tween shows anymore, they feel like fantasies for 8-12 year old elementary school girls.
 
I know Nick is a kids network, but they never tried to limit its audience this much before. Nickelodeon was fine with older viewers watching as long as kids enjoyed it too, now they seem hell bent on making sure nobody 12 and older can watch the network. So what are your opinions?
Edited by TheMisterManGuy
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They want their animation department to be loud, obnoxios and full of fart jokes and gross shock humor, because they think it'd be funny

 

They also want their sitcoms to follow in Disney's footsteps, which is also a bad idea

 

It's really sad considering I once considered them the pinnacle of animation

 

At least there's still Korra and TMNT

Edited by Megas75
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I feel that Nickelodeon is a sad excuse of its former self. From the early 90's all the way to the early or even mid 2000's, the network had a great diversity of good. Shows. Some were better than others, but shows like Spongebob or Fairly odd Parents (going with a bit later in the timeline there) were great shows for everyone, especially Spongebob. Now even those shows are shells of what they once were.

 

In terms of the live action stuff, I actually think Nick started to go downhill once they started to show sitcoms on their regular network. Remember All That? Keenan and Kel? The Amanda Show? To me, those were 'live action' shows that actually had the Nick feel to them, they were over the top and very cheesy but that's why I even liked those. They embraced just having fun and so did the cartoons of that time. Even some of the gross out humor of the 90's worked for what it was because it wasn't the main attraction like they expect it to be now.

 

Now, everything feels shallow, uncreative, and annoying. I don't watch much cable anymore at all but if I did, this network is pretty much dead to me now. That really saddens me greatly, this is one of the networks I grew up.

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They want their animation department to be loud, obnoxios and full of fart jokes and gross shock humor, because they think it'd be funny

 

They also want their sitcoms to follow in Disney's footsteps, which is also a bad idea

 

It's really sad considering I once considered them the pinnacle of animation

 

At least there's still Korra and TMNT

To Be honest, Disney's "Zoog" era shows actually felt like tween shows. So Weird, Jett Jackson, In a Heartbeat, They actually felt like shows aimed at 11-14 year olds. This was before Disney began whoring out Hillary Duff and Hannah Montana, and added an annoying laugh track to their shows.

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Nickelodeon has really went downhill in these recent years. One thing that Nick likes to do is they put kids first in everything, which honestly is a bad thing to do. The reason for this is since shows like the awful Breadwinners is apparently loved by others, Nick assumes that kids want to see nothing but snot and booger. It's a real shame, Nick was once respectful to its audience no matter the age or gender. Now they're a greedy company who over-advertise Spongebob and insult everybody's intelligence. But I guess that's what happens when your company becomes rich, eh?

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I loved Nick when i was a kid and now watching it is awful, and the problem is not that they're trying to skew younger audience, is that the shows are stupid, it is possible to make shows for children without making them stupid, and that stupidity is not esclusive of shows for children, look at Disney Channel, most of its new shows are awful and stupid, and they're for teenagers.

 

I miss the old Fairly Odd Parents  :(

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Nickeoldeon is the master of pandering to kids. There was a time when they actually tried but that's long gone. In my opinion, the last show from their run of consistently good shows was Avatar the Last Airbender. After that, their cartoons started just pandering to kids with stuff adults think kids enjoy. 

 

As for their live action shows, honestly not even the old ones age well for me. I look at some 90s and early 2000s nick live action and I either get a mix of cheesy or obnoxious with the only ones aging well being Drake and Josh and Ned's Declassified. Though, some of those shows were Oscar worthy compared to some of the live action stuff now. I feel the downfall with that began with iCarly, with the whole idea of teens being famous. Then, they started over saturating that concept. 

 

And then whatever cartoon doesn't become an overnight success they cancel right away. Some shows take time to gain a following.

 

Oh, and quit milking Spongebob. I honestly think They're gonna canel Fairly Oddparents soon since they barley air it anymore and that shows just far out of ideas. But Spongebob, it's getting a second movie. Nuff said.

 

And then there is the crap like Sanjay and Craig and Breadwinners which are just there to pander to kids to the point of insanity.

 

And who could forget how poorly they treated Korra to moving it to online just to make room for more Spongebob reruns.

 

I could go on, but I think this post is long enough.

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Unfortunately, Nickelodeon execs today are alumni of this school of cartoon marketing:

 

unholy_triforce_of_pandering_by_mrenter-

 

The network is more mismanaged than the New York & New Jersey Port Authority and needs to be gutted from the ground up. It's too reliant on SpongeBob and all of its new programming is either too dumb to deserve to live or gets hopscotched around the schedule only to be dumped on that recycle bin known as the Nicktoons channel.

 

The whole culture over there at Nickelodeon is the extreme of what's wrong with kids' TV these days. It's a twofold problem: one is that audiences are splintering, sparking desparate corporate knee-jerk reactions which usually result in cut-and-dry pandering based on demographic generalizations and prejudice, and the other problem is "it's for kids" being used as an excuse to stifle creativity and innovation and excuse effort.

 

The Hub was a welcome change in that it aimed at entire families instead of segregating the demographics. While each show appealed mainly to a different target, there was something for everyone in most of the shows. Nickelodeon lacks that substance due to their lazy organization. I most definitely agree with OP's question. They are not only aiming too narrow, they're aiming at them the wrong way.

Edited by Wind Chaser
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One of my biggest problems is that they're relying way too much on Spongebob/Fairly Odd Parents, and instead of enjoying modest ratings, they're killing any show that isn't met with the exact same success as those(it's a similar yet equally toxic mindset that's hurting the gaming industry too). Doubled with the fact that they mostly want all of the show's to be very similar to those two, that really gives them low varitey compared to what they had in the past

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Yes, and they are not the only culprits nearly every network is scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel for its own reasons. Nickelodeon is taking what worked in the 90's and flushing it straight down the crapper.

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Why are their sitcoms in the first place....Why the heck did Cartoon Network put live action shows in their lineup? Disney is more high school romance/comedy sitcoms than anything else!?! Nick...well haven't seen it since Spongebob took over and if they are just trying to combine CN and Disney, then they will succeed because that's what people want.

Seriously, nearly all popular cartoons seem to ride on the Spongebob train...This is exactly why I hate modern cartoons. As has been stated, networks rely on "stupid" humour to get and maintain an audience. Heaven forbid we actually add any real conflict because we won't maintain the audience and parents will flip out over their child learning about LIFE!!!!

Welcome to the 21st century....

:fiery:

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