The 90s Are All That

[Avaitor]

Give it a couple of years.

And meh. It makes sense to add mid-00's shows, but I'm not interested in catching up with Drake & Josh or iCarly. Ned would be cool, but I'm not seeing it mentioned anywhere. A shame, since besides Avatar, it's easily their best show from that period.

And I noticed that NickSplat added Unfabulous on VRV. I don't think anyone actually remembers that show, though.

[Avaitor]

I noticed another recent change on VRV- Unfabulous and Zoey 101 are out, Angry Beavers and Chalkzone are in.

[Avaitor]

Welp, the block is starting at 1 am coming next week. This time, it's just going to be Rugrats, Arnold, and Rocko, though.

Why even bother if you're not going to use more of your lineup? But to be fair, the repeats of these shows were probably doing better than the MTV shows that took their place, which probably explains their return.

[Avaitor]

New updates to VRV- Global GUTS, the first 2 seasons of Are You Afraid of Dark? and AAAHH!!! Real Monsters, and most surprising of all, the first season of The Journey of Allen Strange. In exchange for Wild Thornberrys and ChalkZone.

[Dr. Insomniac]

and most surprising of all, the first season of The Journey of Allen Strange.

Now that's a show I'm interested in Nick Knacks covering a hundred episodes from now.

[Avaitor]

and most surprising of all, the first season of The Journey of Allen Strange.

Now that's a show I'm interesting in Nick Knacks covering a hundred episodes from now.

I feel that. That's a show I vaguely remember, but don't really remember anything about, besides being kinda weird.

[Dr. Insomniac]

Speaking of Nick Knacks, it's daunting how many shows Poparena has to get to before he starts regularly analyzing an era of Nickelodeon I recognize. I admire his attempt to catalog and dissect every single series that ever aired on Nickelodeon, even the ones that are so forgotten only a couple of old TV Guides are proof of their existence, and he's given some pretty eye-opening looks into little known shows like Vegetable Soup alongside old classics like You Can't Do That on Television, but there's still that lingering "When is he going to get to that show?" feeling on the back of my mind.

[Avaitor]

I only saw his intro video, which piqued my interest, but I just never got around to watching more content, even though I'm definitely interested. I admire him for his commitment if nothing else.

Also, wanna know how badly that MTV thing was a failure? The block is now starting at 10, GAINING an hour from a month ago. As far as I can tell, it's still just Doug, Rugrats, Rocko, and Arnold, though.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I only saw his intro video, which piqued my interest, but I just never got around to watching more content, even though I'm definitely interested. I admire him for his commitment if nothing else.

Well, he finally reached the point when Nickelodeon started airing cartoons, so there's that for an entry point into his series.

Also, wanna know how badly that MTV thing was a failure? The block is now starting at 10, GAINING an hour from a month ago. As far as I can tell, it's still just Doug, Rugrats, Rocko, and Arnold, though.

Seriously, even from a cursory glance, they should have seen how bad an idea that was. MTV reality shows aren't things people look fondly upon years after their airing. They're just TLC-tier trash people watch to make themselves feel better about their own lives.

[Avaitor]

Time for the seasonal update- Real Monsters and Allen Strange are out, Doug and All That are in.

Edit: just realized that I forgot to mention VRV lol

[Avaitor]

I've been finding the time to finally watch Pop Arena's Nick Knack series, and I'm glad that I have. It's a great watch! Highly informative, and nearly as entertaining to boot. I really admire the craft and effort that he puts into each video, how he goes above and beyond to research each show and how it relates to the current part of the network's history that it's a part of. Even though the majority of what he's covered thus far is unknown to me, he makes a good case going into each show, and seems to genuinely enjoy this kind of stuff.

To show what point I made it to, I'm not too far past his You Can't Do That on Television episode. Now while this show is before my time (I couldn't have been older than 3 when it left Nick's main schedule), I am familiar with it, having watched a bunch of it around the time I became interested in the channel's history myself. I do enjoy the show, even despite its jokes generally being done and the acting generally hokey. He does a good job of explaining its benefits, and I can definitely see the appeal for a younger audience.

But the real meat here is his discourse regarding Roger Price. There's some damning stuff here, yet... I honestly thought a lot of the same points when I read Slimed, myself. He may seem well-meaning in his desire to make quality programming for children, but he also doesn't seem like the best mentor for children, to put it lightly. I wouldn't be surprised if there were more "boys will be boys" stories that haven't been shared, and his thing about boys in drag... yikes. It does make certain elements of the show uncomfortable now, even if he isn't quite a Schneider or Kricfalusi-level creep. I do agree that the body shaming jokes haven't aged well, either, but eh, every show has fat jokes.

My only major complaint with his videos is that he tends to repeat content often. This would probably be less of a problem if I wasn't more or less binging these, but I can't count how many times I've seen the same clip of Sy Schneider reading the paper his executive shows him, or the bit from the opening of Hocus Focus where Brad Willis carries and almost drops his stack of film reels. I understand that minimal footage exists from this period, but he could show slightly more of what he does have. Besides that, I am greatly enjoying this.

[Dr. Insomniac]

His recent episode about Nick@Nite was a pretty good watch. He didn't cover the eras of Nick@Nite I remember watching, understandable considering the amount of shows and he wants to get to the Nicktoons era sooner than later, but instead gave a look at the invention of television and how nostalgia flourished among baby boomers.

Speaking of his criticism of the way Roger treated children, his Dennis the Menace retrospective ended on a bleak note. The juxtaposition between discussion of child abuse in the entertainment industry with a clip from The Amanda Show reminded me Nick doesn't learn from its mistakes. Alexa Nikolas revealed she was bullied and abused when filming Zoey 101, but all of her co-stars or staff from the show willfully ignore it because that's detrimental to the Zoey 101 nostalgia they've been pushing lately. That Ryan kid from Ryan's Mystery Playdate is showing all the signs of child exploitation, but media's more interested in how much money he rakes in than the potential pitfalls of an 8-year-old churning out so much TV and online content without rest.

[Avaitor]

It's an unfortunate part of the industry- child actors tend to get screwed over in the industry, and it seems to be especially true for shows heavily featuring child actors. While Klickstein seems like kind of a douche from what I can tell, I do respect that he focused a good chunk of the Slimed book to the actors from these shows talking about some of the negative elements that went on with these shows, from the aforementioned negligence to bullying (the Salute Your Shorts cast and crew sound particularly shitty), and poor compensation.

I think I've read before that the actors don't earn royalties to these shows, which is pretty fucked up? That seems to be less of an issue now, like how Miranda Cosgrove used to make a good six digits per iCarly episode, but these shows more often than not still sound like bad environments for the children involved.

[Dr. Insomniac]

I think I've read before that the actors don't earn royalties to these shows, which is pretty fucked up?

I figured that when Drake Bell got stuck with over 600K in debt even though Nick reruns Drake & Josh all the time on TeenNick and he was basically the face of Nick's live-action shows over a decade and a half ago. Maybe Miranda Cosgrove got a better deal because either her or her parents knew what to negotiate for after experience working on D&J. Helps that I recall iCarly was meant to be a vehicle specifically for her, so she was in a better position to ask for more money than Nick actors who had to audition for lead roles. Compare that to Jennette McCurdy, who implied she left on bad terms with the network, resented Sam Puckett's character as shallow, and made this autobiographical short of her life as a child actress.

And the sad thing is the child star industry is always going to be screwed because there will always be stage parents shoving their kids into show business and children who want to be just like their favorite celebrity. If one kid or their parent wants a better deal from the studio, and they don't have a prior success under their belt like the Olsen Twins did, or they're not connected to other famous people like Jamie Lynn Spears, the studio can simply boot them out and find another child actor willing to put up with a bad contract. The competition's too fierce for this system to eventually rot away.

[Avaitor]

VRV update- nada. The NickSplat side of the app has been removed.

Damn, I was hoping to watch some Doug, too.