Nickelodeon:The Best of Slimes

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio.

Josh Clark (0:11)

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 edition.

Chuck Bryant (0:19)

That's right. And unfortunately, we have to issue a COA for this one.

Josh Clark (0:24)

Oh yeah, and it is pretty unfortunate for sure.

Chuck Bryant (0:28)

Yeah, I mean, you see the title Nickelodeon, and you think just a rip-roaring 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.

Josh Clark (0:48)

There you go. Well done. We should just edit that as a clip, and anytime we have a COA, just pop that in. Yeah, great.

All right, so let's get to the fun nostalgia part first, at least, right?

Chuck Bryant (1:01)

Yeah, for sure.

Josh Clark (1:01)

So Nickelodeon was probably a little after your wheelhouse, right? Were you always a little too old for Nickelodeon? Was there ever a Venn diagram with you and Nickelodeon and happiness in the middle?

Chuck Bryant (1:14)

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 Dare. Yeah.

But yeah, I mean, this was right in the middle of your wheelhouse, so I bet.

Josh Clark (1:35)

I watched this all the time.

Chuck Bryant (1:37)

Yeah, that's great.

Josh Clark (1:38)

I watched Pinwheel. I watched, like you said, They Can't Do That. You Can't Do That on Television, Double Dare.

What else did I watch? Danger Mouse, Inspector Gadget.

Chuck Bryant (1:50)

Oh, wow.

Josh Clark (1:50)

I mean, just basically anything they would put on. Today's special. I was huge into today's special.

Anything they would put on, I would definitely watch, and I loved it all.

Chuck Bryant (2:01)

I love it. Well, this one's for you, baby.

Josh Clark (2:03)

Thanks a lot, man. One thing I did not realize, though, is that Nickelodeon started in my home state of Ohio. I don't know if you've noticed or not, but I'm pretty selective about when I claim Ohio is my home state.

And I know you love to rub it in that you're an Atlanta native, and I'm a newbie, a carpet bagger. But at any rate, that's where Nickelodeon started, actually, in Columbus, Ohio, as part of this test that Warner Cable did, pretty forward-thinking test in 1977 when they're like, hey, you know how everybody watches TV with antennas? We're going to launch the first cable network in the United States, if not the world.

Chuck Bryant (2:46)

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?

Josh Clark (2:57)

Yeah, that's what I'm going with.

Chuck Bryant (2:58)

Q-U-B-E.

And you could pay 10 bucks a month, and, you know, depending on what you were into, you could get shows like Flipo's Magic Cars. They had an early show, kind of preceded Star Search even, I think, called Talent Search.

Josh Clark (3:13)

Yeah, and I was wondering if Star Search grew out of Talent Search, and I could find no correlation.

Chuck Bryant (3:18)

Yeah, I couldn't either. So we give that rumor two and a half stars.

Josh Clark (3:23)

Very nice.

Chuck Bryant (3:25)

I used to love Star Search.

Josh Clark (3:26)

I never really watched it that much, but I do know that Rosie O'Donnell got her start there.

Chuck Bryant (3:31)

Oh, really? Okay.

Josh Clark (3:33)

Oh, she killed.

Chuck Bryant (3:34)

I was a big fan.

Josh Clark (3:35)

She won, like, 15 weeks in a row or something like that.

Chuck Bryant (3:38)

Was she, well, it had adult stuff too, or was it just kids?

Josh Clark (3:42)

Oh, her sets were filthy.

Chuck Bryant (3:44)

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.