Nickelodeon:The Best of Slimes

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“Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of I-Heart Radio.”

Hey, 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, a audition. That's right. And unfortunately, we have to issue a COA for this one. Oh, yeah, that is pretty unfortunate for sure. Yeah, I mean, you see the title Nickelodeon, and you think just a ripper or a 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. And so, trigger warning for people in general and definitely for parents listening with kids. There you go. Well done. We just edit that as a clip, and anytime we have a COA, just just hop 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? Was it?

There ever a venn diagram with you in Nickelodeon and happiness in the middle? There'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-dair. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, this was right in the middle of your wheelhouse, so 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-dair. What else did I watch? Danger Mouse, Inspector Gadget. Wow. I mean, just basically anything they would put on today's special. I was hugely 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. One thing I did not realize, though, was 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. That's true. And I know you love to rub it in that year in Atlanta native. And it's just, you know, I'm a newbie, a carpet bagger. 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. Yeah, 1977, when they're like, hey, you know, everybody watches TV

with antennas, we'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, yeah, that's why I'm going with.”

Q U B E. And you could pay 10 bucks a month. And, you know, depending on what you're into, you could get shows like flippos, magic cars. They had a early show kind of preceded star search even. I think called talent search. Yeah. And I was wondering if it give star search grew out of talent search, and I could find no correlation. Yeah, I could neither.

watched it that much. But I do know that Rosie O'Donnell got her start there. Oh, really? Mm-hmm. Okay. Oh, she killed. That was a big band. 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. Right.

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 didn't fully work.”

They also had other financial difficulties. And I think it launched in 77 when it was done by 84. But 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. But that what was that? I mean, it was a show where live human actors interacted with puppets. And 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. Her Gary Gannou, I had no idea what the origin was. So anywhere that started with Anne, he said,

good. Like he added that G at the very beginning, but what a bit. Can you imagine him just hanging out late one night, smoking a joint and being like, I've got it. Yeah, it was one of those things. It was late 70s or early 80s, pot smoking like kids, like kids programmers essentially is what that kind of show was.

Okay, that's great. It 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 of 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 like you said, I think they just thought it had a nice ring to it, I guess. Yeah, and also weirdly, they had an old timey man as the 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 Windy's, like their wallpaper was made

of like 1910 newspapers. Yeah. Yeah, old windy's. And Tiffany lamps and all that. I'm still

unsettled by those high lace women's boots that they always advertised. Yeah, do sexy.

I might have seen ads for Wicker Wheelchairs, too. Maybe that's where that came to be. Yeah, your, 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 was a silver pinball with Nickelodeon written over it in different colors. That was very pretty. Yeah, very popular bubble letter style at the time. A year later in 1980, a guy named Sci Schneider who was 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. I remember that being a”

thing. And I also remember the Leonard Nemois show being a thing. Leonard Nemois stand by colon, light camera action. Yeah, I'd ever saw or even heard of either of those shows. But then it kind of gives you a taste of how Nickelodeon started out as slightly, it skewed slightly older. So you can 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. It was like a current event show. So I knew about that show, and it was really popular at one, they're given their first cable

programming during the day, but the aiming at work was on after hours. Right, 60 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, but it was for 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 is the guest at the time. He's like, hey, have you heard that

that new record from the BC Boys cookie-puss? And he got Africa bombarded 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 BC boys. Like he was just plugging this is like just some average audience member. It's pretty great. Oh, that's funny. I mean, live wire had some good stuff like Ari and 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 a 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 Laborne. And she was kind of like, nothing at Tithesis to Syshnider, but certainly had a different view of what Nickelodeon should be doing. Syshnider's thing was, you know, like you said, he came from the advertising of the kids world. What's wrong with that? And Geraldine Laborne'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.”

Yeah. For sure. I think Syshnider was a bit older to, if he was working on the Mickey Mouse Club than 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 is 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. For 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? That's right. Uh-huh. Full stop. One of the things that Nick did,

I'm just going to call it Nick because I watched so much of it. I'm on a first name basis with it.

Yeah. But they would basically poke TV shows from Canada. Yeah. They still do as a matter. In 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. As an American, it seems slightly sideways. Exactly. I'm like, these people are really nice. Yeah, exactly. Uh, 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 in Jeffrey Darby. And it was a skit show that was like squarely aimed at making kids laugh like that kind of humor. 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

enough itself because I mean, they were speaking directly to you, kind of ran through that filter. And then also, it, 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. 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 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. And I realized that I watched more of this and I remember watching, I guess.

It was less lie. Less lie. I, that's it. I think they, he went by less 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 metamoments. Right, except well put. This was the, this is preceded, the Larry Sanders show and was actually where it came from. Are you joking? Yeah. Okay. Well, you're my god. You never know. And a Lannis Moore said was also on it, too, because you can't track and eating a TV show

“without having a Lannis Moore said on it. Yeah, ironic that she was on that show, right?”

I don't know. Do you think? 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. Yeah, if you said, I don't know, you would get slime. That's just how it went. Oh, is that the trigger? Yeah, I don't get the rules. It's just how except for one show. And this just goes to show you how early 80s this was. They had an episode of where the Russians took over. And the slime was red slime instead. If anyone who said the word freedom would just fly. 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. I guess it depends on how much you held out for. And they would shoot all the slimeing scenes at the end of the day, and then you would get slimeed and then they would cut and you would run off to the showers because different iterations of slime sometimes turned

a paste in your mirror if you didn't get it out fast enough. And they finally found the right one

is a methyl cellulose blend that it had zero allergens in it, so they could even dump it on audience members without fear of litigation or at least them winning litigation. But it went through all sorts of different things like cottage cheese, vegetable oil, vanilla pudding, gelo for a little while. Yeah, apple sauce. Yeah. Should we take it right? Yeah, I'm getting, 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.

On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait for hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Biniero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people and

they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita. On the I-Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“If you're a bookshelf and you're for you page or equally important to your personality,”

welcome home. This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part-foot club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo, and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm a son of a son of a son. From best-selling

authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. So like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters and that is of Trojan Horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the I-Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

See you between the pages. That call was really pivotal for me. Hey, it's Emily Tish Susman, and this is an on-she-pivots, the podcast where women share bold career moves and personal turning points that changed everything. I sit down with culture-shifting women who share their pivots like Para, Olympian, Alley, Troit. I was like, I'm a mon... I hope from a shark attack.

feel that dry though. I can still make a difference. So I'm going to keep going. Celebrity chef, Carla Hall, was that scary to walk away from such a stable career after just two years? No, I was more afraid of being unhappy than I was broke. And in a dead end job that I didn't enjoy. And feminist legend, Laura Steinem. All of us were trying to express women's real lives. We need a meeting place of our own, and if I can contribute to that, I'd like to maintain that and

leave this house for that purpose. Listen to she-pivots on the I-Heart Radio App, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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 that named Bob Pitman, who we've talked about, you know, one of the founders of MTV and our boss at I-Heart Media.

“It's several wrongs 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, Bob runs I-Heart Media, and he became a head of Nickelodeon's parent company, which was Warner Mx at the time. He was an 83. He was a lot younger than Syshnider 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 Pippin had a lot of cred around the television world because of MTV 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 Mx, he was now over the people who were running Nickelodeon. He took an interest in it early on. And so after Schneider left, Geraldine Laborn was put as the head of the network. And now Nickelodeon

“really blossomed. Like, this is the Nickelodeon I remember and like really love. This is 1984, I think.”

Yeah. One of the first things that Laborn 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." So Fred Allen, firm comes in, they said, "Alright, 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, stand up and like shout like, "Hey, you're not listening to me, like this is for us and do things that we want to see finally." Alright, 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,

this pinball and rainbow letters thing is so childish and patronizing. Sessionator, come on. I still like it. Oh, really? Yeah, I thought I thought it was very cute.

“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 its pantone 21. I don't know if you say the 0 first,

maybe pantone 0 to 1 orange, which is now recognized pretty much everywhere is 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. It 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. 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.O.K. in my book. Well, you're childhood deities like me. Yeah. And, you know,

But they had some pretty legendary like super 80 sets on their shows. Yes. They do, man, 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 looks like a slime splat. And that's kind of

what they stuck with. Right. They also did bumpers, you know, coming in and out of commercial breaks, like they animated ones. There was a series of, um, like a, a, a do-op singing group called the

“J5. Those are great. Do you remember those? Yeah. And I went and watched them up in today. And I was like,”

oh, yeah. I remember these. They were great. There are two standouts. One I can do is picnic,

picnic, picnic, niko, lo dion. Right. There's another one. I've never been able to do it.

It's too fast for my, my thick tongue. But it is great. So just go look up a Nick J5 bumpers and you'll see what I'm talking about. Well, what was the fast one? Like, just tell me a slow down version or something. So I might recognize it. Um, no. No. All right. I'll look it up after you. Yeah, you're going to have to do that. Hey, man. I admire your, you know, gumption to stick up for yourself. I thought of. So with Labore and running the show,

they started doing some pretty great original programs. They had a sketch show called Out of Control that I remember. It was hosted by Dave Kooye, uh, of, uh, what, full house? Yeah. Yeah. 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. I do not remember that one at all. But they would do something that Nick”

Kloodym was also a really good at besides poaching Canadian shows. They would go overseas and find 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. 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. Yeah, it's, that's exactly what it was. I was watching that without knowing that. That's just funny that a kid couldn't be like something slightly off here. And I can't even point what it is because you didn't know they did stuff like that. Yeah. And I was

“shrugged. It was like whatever. It's still. Yeah, it's like watch. But it's on there. It was always there,”

you know, a little. Yeah, great. Gazoo was over my shoulder. Like it's European. Right. So labor and went back to Darby. One of the guys who co-created, you can't do that on television. It was like, 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 the episode of Double Dare earlier today too. It was a lot of fun to see.

Yes, 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 were 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 went. So just really fun dumb stuff if you're, you know, nine to twelve years old. Yeah, or like what a great idea. But it's not only though, is it like, like, they 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 is great.

He was wonderful. The set, like you said, it was in the Memphis style, which was huge in the 80s. Yeah. Like, Peewees 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 that 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 bookers first and then slime would come out of the nose. And then after all that, you had to stick

Like, that's what kids want to see. Exactly. And then the other thing, every single contestant was so psyched to be there. So seriously, it was completely sincere. It was just a wonderful, I loved double there. I could watch double there all day long. Yeah, it didn't do a lot of the stuff all day long. Can you imagine getting that phone call or letter in the mail where you are

“or pick to be a contestant on that show and what like that must have felt like as a kid?”

Yeah, for sure, for other kids, 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 wanted to be picked? 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. My dad was not a participant. Let's just say that. All right, well, I'm in life like that. I'm with them on on that. I just, 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, because you've got a lot of experience on stage. 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 theme. Yeah, yeah. They'd be like, "Why is that guy's hand trembling?" That's funny, because you stand on stage in front of like 2,000 people in our 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.

“Have you ever seen the 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 true trembling 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 late back. It's just so easy for you. Hey, it's, uh, we're the getting young, you know? I'm the, um, the shuttery side. That's right.

So these were all shot at the time in Philadelphia, the W-H-Y-Y studios. And, um, you know, it was a big hit.

Mark Summers, everyone loved him like he 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. Yeah. One of the other things that made Nickelodeon a juggernaut was after A and E was, like, Sinara, we're going to form our own full network. Nickelodeon had the evening hours to fill all of a sudden. Yeah. 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 Kingsberry, Non-Occoholic Beer and Slim Jims and Twicks and just settle in for the night. It was just sit there and watch, like, F-Troup and Mr. Ed and I spy. I just, it just, the whole network just spooked 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 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 guys 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 a university, 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 day are 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. 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. Got, I'd never heard of before. Same. It was like

Ninja Warrior type thing, I think. Yeah. 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 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 of

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 the little shorts or clear six feelings at all, but they were all sitcoms like live action sitcoms. Yeah. And they were huge hits, right? Yeah. Yeah. The one that gets me in the 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. You're just going to have

to trust me. I didn't know I was about to stun you with that remotely. 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. I really think she's like it. All right, we'll check it out. The

“only time that I've ever been star struck Chuck that I can remember like genuinely star struck 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. We're 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 just I was just barely hanging on during that conversation. Yeah, I remember one other time you were star struck when we got to go to the Simpsons stable read and we met Matt Graining. Fair enough.

Yeah, because I was the same. You and I were both like tiny children. That's true. That's true. Yeah, that's 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. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait for hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.

I chose option B. I'm Julie Biniero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say

yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita,

trading the pity for possibility. Every time I try to be alone, I kept meeting people and they were like, you smiled at us, not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita.

On the I-Hurt Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

“If you're a bookshelf and you're for you page or equally important to your personality, welcome home.”

This is Pro's Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters, pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island to deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story, everyone says. So it was us. From best-selling authors

and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. So like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, and that is of Trojan Horse, whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations, or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro's Society on the I-Hurt Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

See you between the pages. On big lives, we take a single cultural icon. People like Jane Fonda, George Michael, Richard Prior, and we pull apart the story behind the image. And we do this by digging through the BBC's vast archive. We're talking iconic moments in broadcast history. I'm not just a boxer, I'm educating, I can talk all week, all the millions of subjects,

and forgotten interviews that change how we see these giants of our culture.

Well, if changing the system from the ground up is revolutionary, and then I'm revolutionary.

We're here for the messy, the brilliant, the human version of our heroes. And we want to go on stage. I like to dress as slutsies possible, because it might be dark but for some reason. I'm Emmanuel Jochi. I'm Kai Wright, and this is Big Lives. Listen to Big Lives on the I-Hurt Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get podcasts.

Nickelodeon's dial thought of more than anything else is a place where some really great cartoons

have been birthed. Not the least of which was run in 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 Rennend Stimpy Show show called Doug, and of course, Rugrats all premiered in 1991, which is kind of crazy, because those shows were all huge. Laboren was still the network head in '91, but left about five years after that and was succeeded

in '96 by a guy named Herb Skennel, I guess? Sure. And he really, I guess was like this animation thing is the thing we should keep doing it. Rennend 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 Rennend Stimpy”

John Chris Feluci, 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. But apparently he, like,

couldn't stay on budget and would blow a lot of deadlines, so he'd, 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 to 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, which 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 Rennend Stimpy ended. Yeah, Rennend Stimpy, like you said, it carried on without him for years, and 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, and then it's been off the legend of Korra, which is voiced, Korra is voiced by

friend of the show in friend and real life, Janet Barney. Yeah, it's all that. It's pretty awesome. It's the best. Ruby really got into that show, and 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 his 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.”

Yeah, so we've gone way out of my wheelhouse. Now, the last cartoon that I watched consistently came out in '93, it was Rocco's Modern Life, which was really big. And I was used to watch Doug, it was a sweet cartoon. Yeah, I remember Doug. Kind of like a diary of a wimpy kid kind of saying a little too, you know, he's 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,

the biggest cartoon that maybe had ever been on television was, um, and it is SpongeBob Square Pants, and that started in 1999, and a guy named Stephen Hillenberg, who, um, I guess studied to be a marine biologist kind of famously, he, uh, he created SpongeBob Square Pants instead, and I think it was probably a pretty good move on his part. Great move. It's still going today. It's in a 17th season, um, 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. Yeah, toys and clothes,

and, you know, you name it, like any, anything, to an including a Broadway musical. Yeah, in Hillenberg,

“uh, got a substantial chunk of that. He had negotiate, 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,

early on, and from then on, everyone is like, that's the move. Yeah. It's always really paid off

“for us in aces. Well, he, he, uh, I think they got mad at him about that, they're right. Yeah, so, um,”

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 Sima Zorgami, and she, as apparently well known for not being happy that Hillenberg made as much money as he did from the SpongeBob, um, revshare arrangement, and so she made sure that if you

were a new creator coming to bring a show on the Nick, you got zero, begle percentage of the merch sales from your creation. 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, um, 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? Yeah. That's kind of a sneaky way to get free programming. Exactly. Or to get people who you can exploit because they're home 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 turned down adventure time, you're just a pariah. Yeah. 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 brain 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, um, child sexual abuse problem at Nickelodeon. That's only a way to say it. Yeah. Those are 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. It's it's pretty upsetting, but I'm sure, um, you know,

“you're a big Nickelodeon guy. So I don't know if you want to, like you know all this happen,”

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. He was in, uh, better off dead with John Q. Zach. And like that was him. Yeah. 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. Uh, but he started out as a writer in 1994 on the sketch show all that and created some of their biggest live action shows, uh, the Amanda show with Amanda Bines, uh, Drake and Josh, uh, Zoe 101, I Carly, Henry Danger, like these are huge manga shows. And at the time, he was being criticized, like even while he was there of like, man, this kind of like putting pretty overt, like sexual humor in these, uh, shows. And like making girls do like

really kind of, uh, pretty obvious sexual things, uh, 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? 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 gasled everyone with

his apology later. Uh, but there was more abuse going on too, right? Yeah, Drake Bell, uh, who I didn't watch it, but I'm guessing he was one of the characters and Drake and Josh as well. Yeah. He, he started out on the Amanda show with Amanda Bines. He had a dialogue coach who sexually abused him and 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 in the Amanda show. He got a six year sentence for sexually abusing two girls. And then a few years after that, another Nickelodeon worker and animator named Ezle Channel was convicted of sexually abusing boys at the studio. So this is what I was saying when when I was saying like Simon's origami is is not very well thought of among fans, just at that 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

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. Right. Like when my niece Miele 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 and these these shows. No, it's way more lags back then and 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 kids 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 and there weren't more protections in place. Like the documentaries

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 Genet McCurdy who was on Icarly and also started with Ariana Grande on Sam and Cat which was an Icarly spin off. She basically came out and it 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 were 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. 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 to that that really just put a really negative light on Nickelodeon. Yeah, 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 Schneider was verbally abusive.

“We found out and he threw tantrum so he's out of here. When she and this is even more upsetting,”

when all this came out after Sam and Kat was canceled, she had a conference call. This was the Janette 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. 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 all the series really ended because she was mad that Ariana Grande was paid more than her, which is just about as violent as it gets. Let's come back, man. That's just terrible. So, like you said, that docu-series came out and really just kind of got the point across of what was going on. There's a journalist who was part of the documentary Scotchie Cool and they said that

that a lot of these people are still working in the industry, by the way. Yeah, so like you said, Schneider, Dan Schneider issued an apology on YouTube, but you said it was a non-apology. I didn't want it. Yeah, I mean, he basically gaslit everyone and it was like, yeah, you know what? I had 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 the 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. Yeah, pretty disappointing. Nickelodeon, like you said, has really gone downhill a lot since then, and you know, harshly 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 in 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 and no more cable network. Now they are the 60th, 60th, 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 apps stuff. Yeah, I looked that up. It's about, it's about the same that Disney channel, not Disney

Plus, but the cable Disney cable channel gets every day. So it seems like it's not just Nick, but

land gets every day. So people go nuts for those friends reruns. I watch those in hotels a lot.

Do you? Yeah, like you know, flipping it around. They have the often awful motion smoothing on all the hotel TVs, but 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 something. 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, once I've seen the”

friends without the laugh track videos, I can't watch it anymore. Oh, yeah, friend. That's a fun. It was in a big loss. But anyway, that's Nick Lodian, 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 Nick Lodian to get great again, how about listen or mail? All right. This short and sweet. Hey, guys. This is on rope. When rope is cut to length and

use for purpose on a ship, everybody, it becomes line. Oh, Chuck was using line when hoisting gyps and

sales. I've never sailed myself. But whatever 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 this nan tuck and story, I stuttered. It's all good to me, though, guys. But passing this long and honor my old boss and that is bill from latites. I guess is how you pronounce it. LIT, IT, Z, Littitz, latites. What is that in a state or is it its own micro nation? I've never heard of it. I'm going to look it up right now, though. While you, uh, Chuck, okay. Well, thanks a lot, Bill.

We're going to try to figure out where you're from. Pennsylvania. Okay, Pennsylvania. I get a guess that. Yeah, Lancaster County. Hello. Sure. Okay. Oh, hey, Bill hangs out with the homage there. That's right. All right. Well, Bill, be sure to tell the homage 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 [email protected]. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows. On the new podcast, Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait for hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle.

I choose option B. I'm Julie Piniero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where

I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita,

trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're a bookshelf and you are for you page or equally

“important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club,”

park group chat for anyone who thinks pride and prejudice and love island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet and pop culture, with your favorite writers, book top creators, and plenty of overthought opinions. Listen to Pro Society on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Self-cast September is your reminder to slow down, check in with yourself, get off your phone,

and maybe ask, why am I like this? I'm Gemisbeg host of the psychology of your 20s podcast, and this month we're helping you make sense of the person that you are becoming, from setting boundaries and navigating friendships to understanding anxiety, confidence, relationships, and attachment. Sometimes our biggest decisions, without us even realizing it aren't driven by what we truly want, but by what will prevent us from feeling

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